Aviation Movie Reviews

This is a review of Pearl Harbor related movies and originally appeared in the ezine.

Probably best known to today's audiences is Pearl Harbor (2001, Touchstone, PG-13). That's not the most imaginative title, but definitely much better than the original working title of Tennessee, the setting of the opening sequence set in 1923.

Rafe (Ben Affleck) and Danny (Josh Hartnett) are childhood friends who become pilots in Army Air Corps and pick the wrong time to live in Hawaii. Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale) is a nurse who becomes romantically involved with both of them, in true Titanic style. (In fact, some of the movie was shot at the same Mexican studio used for Titanic.)

The supporting cast features Jon Voight as President Franklin D. Roosevelt (including a recreation of his "day of infamy" speech) and Alec Baldwin as Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle. Cuba Gooding, Jr. plays Petty Officer Dorie Miller, a cook on the USS West Virginia who took heroic action on that infamous day and was the first black American to be awarded the Navy Cross. Dan Aykroyd makes a cameo as a military code breaker who predicts the Japanese attack.

The love triangle is essentially filler between the action sequences, which are the main reason to watch this movie. The action is impressive, using all the effects tricks in the filmmakers' toolbox. See if you can tell which planes are real Mitsubishi Zeroes and which are computer generated. The key sequence in the film is the 30-minute attack on the harbor plus the events leading up to it (including the Japanese behind the scenes), and the aftermath.

Other action scenes outside Hawaii include the Battle of Britain in the summer/fall of 1940 (involving one of our heroes, of course) and Jimmy Doolittle's raid on Tokyo in April 1942.

Two versions of the movie are available on DVD. The original release is called the 60th Anniversary Commemorative Edition. (That refers to the attack, not the movie!) One and a half discs are needed for the movie itself, which clocks in at 183 minutes. Since half discs don't work in most players, Disney rounded up to two discs and added a making-of featurette, a History Channel documentary, a Faith Hill music video, and some other extras which require a DVD-ROM drive. The set includes Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 soundtracks, as well as a separate Dolby headphone track.

For true Pearl buffs, there is also a four-disc Vista Series Director's Cut. This version is a minute longer and carries an R rating. In addition to the extras of the other edition, you get two more discs packed with features. Among them are another History Channel documentary, One Hour Over Tokyo, an interactive timeline, segments showing the actors going through movie boot camp, commentaries and interviews with veterans. The feature-length commentaries include a track by director Michael Bay; one with producer Jerry Bruckheimer, Affleck, Hartnett, Beckinsale, and Baldwin; and another with crew members such as the director of photography, production designer, and costume designer.

An earlier film focused more on the Pearl Harbor attack and without the love triangle is Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970, Fox, rated G). Tora could be seen as two films in one. It was a collaboration between American and Japanese filmmakers, with directors and writers from each country, and tells the story from both sides. (Some scenes are in Japanese with English subtitles.) Therefore, it's less of a pro-American film than Pearl Harbor since it deals more with the mistakes and miscommunication between the two countries before the attack took place.

Some of the better known Americans in the cast are Martin Balsam as Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, Joseph Cotten as Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and Jason Robards. James Whitmore plays Admiral William "Bull" Halsey, whose name was in the title of Paul McCartney's number one single Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey, a year after Tora's release. Was the song inspired by the film or is that a coincidence?

The current DVD version of Tora includes a feature-length commentary by director Richard Fleisher and film historian Stewart Galbraith and a new 20-minute documentary. (Kinji Fukasaku, the director of the Japanese parts of the film, died early in 2003 and perhaps was too ill to participate in the commentary.)

Fox has also released Tora as part of a four-DVD box, the World War II Collection, which also includes Patton (1970), The Longest Day (1962), and The Thin Red Line (1998).