Pearl Harbor (film)
Pearl Harbor is a 2001 American romantic war drama film directed by Michael Bay, produced by Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer and written by Randall Wallace. It stars Ben Affleck, Kate Beckinsale, Josh Hartnett, Cuba Gooding Jr., Tom Sizemore, Jon Voight, Colm Feore, and Alec Baldwin. The film features a heavily fictionalized version of the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941, focusing on a love story set amidst the lead up to the attack, its aftermath, and the Doolittle Raid.
Pearl Harbor
- Jerry Bruckheimer
- Michael Bay
- May 21, 2001 (Pearl Harbor, Hawaii)
- May 25, 2001 (Mainland United States)
183 minutes[1]
United States
- English
- Japanese
$449.2 million[2]
The film was a box office success, earning $59 million in its opening weekend and $450.2 million worldwide,[2] but received negative reviews from critics, who criticized the story, long runtime, screenplay and dialogue, pacing, performances and historical inaccuracies, although the visual effects and Hans Zimmer's score were praised. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning in the category of Best Sound Editing. It was also nominated for six Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Picture.
Plot[edit]
In 1923 Tennessee, two best friends, Rafe McCawley and Danny Walker, play together in the back of Danny's father's, who is a World War One Veteran suffering from PTSD, old biplane, pretending to be fighting airmen.
In January 1941, with World War II raging, Danny and Rafe are both first lieutenants under the command of Major Jimmy Doolittle. Doolittle informs Rafe that he has been accepted into the Eagle Squadron (an RAF outfit for American pilots during the Battle of Britain). A nurse named Evelyn Johnson passes Rafe's medical exam despite his dyslexia, and the two strike up a relationship. Four weeks later, Rafe and Evelyn, now deeply in love, enjoy an evening of dancing at a nightclub and later a jaunt in the New York harbor in a borrowed police boat. Rafe shocks Evelyn by saying that he has joined the Eagle Squadron and is leaving the next day. During a mission to intercept a Luftwaffe bombing raid, Rafe is shot down over the English Channel and is presumed killed in action. Danny and Evelyn mourn Rafe's death together, which spurs a romance between the two.
Meanwhile, Japan prepares to attack the US Pacific Fleet, deciding the best way to do so would be a decisive strike on the Pearl Harbor naval base.
On the night of December 6, Evelyn is shocked to discover Rafe standing outside her door, having survived his downing and the ensuing months trapped in Nazi-occupied France. Rafe, in turn, discovers Danny's romance with Evelyn and leaves for the Hula bar, where he is welcomed back by his overjoyed fellow pilots. Danny finds a drunken Rafe in the bar with the intention of reconciling, but the two get into a fight. When military police arrive, they flee the scene to avoid being put in the brig and fall asleep in Danny's car.
Next morning, on December 7, the Imperial Japanese Navy begins its attack on Pearl Harbor. The US Pacific Fleet is severely damaged in the surprise attack, and most of the defending airfields are obliterated before they can launch fighters to defend the harbor. Rafe and Danny take off in P-40 fighter planes, and shoot down seven of the attacking planes. They later assist in the rescue of the crew of the capsized USS Oklahoma, but are too late to save the crew of the obliterated USS Arizona.
The next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers his Day of Infamy speech to the nation and requests that the US Congress declare a state of war with the Empire of Japan. The survivors attend a memorial service to honor the numerous dead. Danny and Rafe are both assigned to travel stateside under Doolittle, though they are not told why. Before they leave, Evelyn reveals to Rafe that she is pregnant with Danny's child. She intends to stay with and devote herself to Danny for their child’s sake, but she vows that it is Rafe who she will always truly love.
Danny and Rafe are both promoted to captain and awarded the Silver Star for their actions at Pearl Harbor, and Doolittle asks them to volunteer for a secret mission. During the next three months, Rafe, Danny and other pilots train for ultra-short takeoffs with specially modified B-25 Mitchell bombers. In April, the raiders are sent toward Japan on board USS Hornet. Their mission is to bomb Tokyo, after which they will land in China. The mission is successful, but Rafe's and Danny's planes run out of fuel and crash in Japanese-occupied territory in China. A gunfight ensues between the raiders and Japanese ground troops, and Danny is mortally wounded shielding Rafe before the group are rescued by Chinese soldiers. Rafe tearfully reveals to Danny that Evelyn is pregnant with Danny's child; with his dying breaths, Danny tells Rafe that it is his child now.
After the war, Rafe and Evelyn, now married, visit Danny's grave with Evelyn's son, named Danny after his biological father. Rafe then asks his stepson if he would like to go flying, and they fly off into the sunset in the old biplane that Rafe's father once owned.
Release[edit]
Marketing[edit]
Disney premiered the film at Pearl Harbor itself, aboard the active nuclear aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, which made a six-day trip from San Diego to serve as "the world's largest and most expensive outdoor theater". More than 2,000 people attended the premiere on the Stennis, which had special grandstand seating and one of the world's largest movie screens assembled on the flight deck.[9] The guests included various Hawaii political leaders, most of the lead actors from the film, and over 500 news media from around the world that Disney flew in to cover the event. The party was estimated to have cost Disney $5 million.[10]
Box office[edit]
During its opening weekend, Pearl Harbor generated a total of $59 million, then made $75.1 million during its first four days.[11] At the time, it achieved the second-highest Memorial Day weekend gross, behind The Lost World: Jurassic Park.[12] The film also had the fourth-highest opening weekend, after the latter film, The Mummy Returns and Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.[13] For 15 years, it would have the highest opening weekend for a Ben Affleck film until 2016 when Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice surpassed it.[14] When the film was released, it topped the box office, knocking out Shrek.[11] It earned $30 million during its second weekend while staying at the number one spot.[15] This was the most recent film to top the box office for multiple weeks until that August when American Pie 2 became the next one to do so.[16] The film would then drop into third place behind Swordfish and Shrek, making $14.9 million.[17]
In Japan, the film opened on 424 screens and grossed $7.2 million in its opening weekend (including $1.6 million in previews), a record for Buena Vista International in Japan, and the sixth highest opening of all-time.[18] Meanwhile, Pearl Harbor generated a three-day gross of $4.5 million in the United Kingdom, becoming the country's fourth-highest June opening weekend, behind Batman & Robin, The Matrix and The Mummy.[19] It had a record opening in China, grossing $3.9 million in 6 days.[20]
Pearl Harbor grossed $198,542,554 at the US and Canadian box office and $250,678,391 overseas for a worldwide total of $449,220,945, making this the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2001.[2] It is also the third-highest-grossing romantic drama film of all time, as of January 2013, behind Titanic and Ghost.[21]
Home media[edit]
Pearl Harbor was released on VHS and DVD on December 4, 2001.[22][23] In its first week, it sold more than 7 million units and made more than $130 million in retail sales.[22] The DVD release is THX certified and consists of two discs, while also featuring Dolby Headphone and DTS audio tracks.[24]
On July 2, 2002, Buena Vista Home Entertainment released the film on an R-rated four-disc Director's Cut DVD, which included about a minute of additional footage.[25][26]
Reception[edit]
Critical response[edit]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 24% based on 194 reviews, with an average rating of 4.5/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Pearl Harbor tries to be the Titanic of war movies, but it's just a tedious romance filled with laughably bad dialogue. The 40-minute action sequence is spectacular though."[27] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 44 out of 100 based on 35 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[28] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "A−" on scale of A to F.[29]
Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert gave the film one and a half stars, writing: "Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how, on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision, or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialogue, it will not be because you admire them." Ebert also criticized the liberties the film took with historical facts: "There is no sense of history, strategy or context; according to this movie, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because America cut off its oil supply, and they were down to an 18-month reserve. Would going to war restore the fuel sources? Did they perhaps also have imperialist designs? Movie doesn't say."[30] In his later "Great Movies" essay on Lawrence of Arabia, Ebert likewise wrote, "What you realize watching Lawrence of Arabia is that the word 'epic' refers not to the cost or the elaborate production, but to the size of the ideas and vision. Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God didn't cost as much as the catering in Pearl Harbor, but it is an epic, and Pearl Harbor is not."[31]
A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote, "Nearly every line of the script drops from the actors' mouths with the leaden clank of exposition, timed with bad sitcom beats."[32] Mike Clark of USA Today gave the film two out of four stars and wrote, "Ships, planes and water combust and collide in Pearl Harbor, but nothing else does in one of the wimpiest wartime romances ever filmed."[33]
In his review for The Washington Post, Desson Howe wrote, "although this Walt Disney movie is based, inspired and even partially informed by a real event referred to as Pearl Harbor, the movie is actually based on the movies Top Gun, Titanic and Saving Private Ryan. Don't get confused."[34] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine wrote, "Affleck, Hartnett and Beckinsale – a British actress without a single worthy line to wrap her credible American accent around – are attractive actors, but they can't animate this moldy romantic triangle."[35] Time magazine's Richard Schickel criticized the love triangle: "It requires a lot of patience for an audience to sit through the dithering. They're nice kids and all that, but they don't exactly claw madly at one another. It's as if they know that someday they're going to be part of "the Greatest Generation" and don't want to offend Tom Brokaw. Besides, megahistory and personal history never integrate here."[36]
Entertainment Weekly was more positive, giving the film a "B−" rating, and Owen Gleiberman praised the Pearl Harbor attack sequence: "Bay's staging is spectacular but also honorable in its scary, hurtling exactitude. ... There are startling point-of-view shots of torpedoes dropping into the water and speeding toward their targets, and though Bay visualizes it all with a minimum of graphic carnage, he invites us to register the terror of the men standing helplessly on deck, the horrifying split-second deliverance as bodies go flying and explosions reduce entire battleships to liquid walls of collapsing metal."[37]
In his review for The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris wrote, "here is the ironic twist in my acceptance of Pearl Harbor – the parts I liked most are the parts before and after the digital destruction of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese carrier planes" and felt that "Pearl Harbor is not so much about World War II as it is about movies about World War II. And what's wrong with that?"[38]
Critics in Japan received the film more positively than in most countries with one likening it to Gone with the Wind set during World War II and another describing it as more realistic than Tora! Tora! Tora![18]
In 2023, Rolling Stone cited Bay's direction of Pearl Harbor as one of the fifty worst decisions in film history. Andy Greene described it as a less successful attempt to replicate the success of Titanic and Bay's previous film, Armageddon.[39]
Accolades[edit]
The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning in the category of Best Sound Editing. It was also nominated for six Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Picture.[40] This marked the first occurrence of a Worst Picture-nominated film winning an Academy Award; it is also the only film directed by Bay to win an Academy Award.
In popular culture[edit]
The soundtrack for the 2004 film Team America: World Police contains a song entitled "End of an Act". The song's chorus recounts, "Pearl Harbor sucked, and I miss you" equating the singer's longing for his girlfriend to how much "Michael Bay missed the mark when he made Pearl Harbor" which is "an awful lot, girl". The ballad contains other common criticisms of the film, concluding with the rhetorical question "Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?"[84]
The 2004 film Churchill: The Hollywood Years, a satire on the Hollywood take on history, references the portrayal of the American contribution to the Battle of Britain early in Pearl Harbor.