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Pearl Harbor (2001)
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The surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 was a major event in US history (awakening the sleeping giant and all that), but this attempt to capture it on screen by the big-thinking producer/director team of Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay (The Rock, Armageddon) is a huge disappointment. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the actual attack, which forms the middle act of the film's bloated three hours, is an amazing spectacle — it's almost worth the obscene $135-million budget. However, sheer cinematic power is undermined by our total lack of empathy for any of the cardboard cut-out characters who populate Bay's advert-like world of slow-motion and colour filters (and baseball-playing kids to signify America — yes, we get it). Weaknesses of plot and characterisation are only amplified by the film's unwieldy size and patriotic portent, and the script is toe-curlingly bad. Bruckheimer and Bay presumably think their love story and wartime heroics are charmingly old-fashioned. They have clearly not studied Casablanca or From Here to Eternity. AC
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| Contains violence, swearing. |
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Tell us what you think
Email us at rtfilmcomments@bbc.co.uk to tell us what you think of this film. Your comments may appear in Radio Times magazine.
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Running time
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175min
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Country of origin
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US
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Genre
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Second World War Romantic Drama
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Alternate title
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Pearl Harbour
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Original language
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English
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Screenplay
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Randall Wallace
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Theatrical distributor
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Buena Vista
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UK cinema certificate
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12
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UK cinema release date
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June 2001
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UK video release date
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November 2001
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Film certification logos reproduced by kind permission of BBFC |
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