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Re: "Pearl Harbor" Reconsidered

Posted by Bruce from DC (B) on August 12, 2002 at 08:38:37

In Reply to: "Pearl Harbor" Reconsidered posted by mikenyc on August 11, 2002 at 11:45:24:

What's to reconsider. An utterly predictable, trite film. Cool digital special effects -- that's it.

While most of the films you mention are not that great, either: "From here to Eternity" is in a class by itself. Why? Because its about real people who act like real people, not soap opera characters. It is not the story of Pearl Harbor; it is the story of people played out against the backdrop of Pearl Harbor.

"Tora, Tora, Tora" and "Midway" both illustrate the trap that the "Pearl Harbor" guys wanted to avoid -- bloodless, documentary re-creations of famous battles. Yet, Pearl Harbor fails because it straddles the fence. Unlike "Eternity", it is unwilling to totally abandon the concept of re-creating Pearl Harbor from a Gods-eye view (after all, gotta show off those cool special effects!). But it splits the difference between being a story of a few people with the Pearl Harbor attack as a backdrop and being a documentary re-creation. As a result it fails at being either.

What I would like to see is the Pearl Harbor story told from the perspective of the Vice Admiral in charge of the facility -- was he complacent, sloppy in his command or did things just line up in a series of conincidences that produced this terrible result? What did he feel, what did he think, how did he react as the pride of the American Navy, his Navy, was getting blasted to bits by enemy aircraft? What did he feel afterword when he was court-martialed? Did he accept blame? Or did he try to shift the blame on to others?

That's a story with some real depth to it.

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