Edition: U.S. / Global

FILM REVIEW; War Is Hell, but Very Pretty

Published: May 25, 2001


''Pearl Harbor,'' the noisy, expensive and very long new blockbuster from Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay, steals an occasional glance in the direction of ''Eternity,'' Fred Zinnemann's durable 1953 melodrama, adapted from James Jones's sprawling best seller. A couple smooches in front of pounding Pacific surf, though they don't actually roll around in it, as did Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr. Military police officers break up a barroom fight. And since the movie is in ripe, lustrous color, the sun dresses and Hawaiian shirts look just fabulous. But ''Pearl Harbor'' has as little interest in character as it does, ultimately, in history.

For all its epic pretensions (as if epic were a matter of running time, tumescent music and earnest voice-over pronouncements), the movie works best as a bang-and-boom action picture, a loud symphony of bombardment and explosion juiced up with frantic editing and shiny computer-generated imagery. When Jon Voight appears as President Franklin D. Roosevelt, his face bloated with several pounds of prosthetic latex (and his voice burnished into a patrician drawl), you half expect one of those inevitable action-thriller unmaskings, in which he peels off the rubber, climbs out of the wheelchair and reveals himself to be Steven Seagal ready to lay a smackdown on the treacherous Japanese. The film's reported budget was $135 million, which breaks down to roughly $45 million an hour.

The bulk of the money seems to have been spent -- and not too badly spent, as these things go -- on the long sequence devoted to the attack itself. The appearance of Japanese bombers buzzing in formation through the bright morning sunshine as housewives tend their clotheslines and children frolic on ball fields is meant to convey dread and impending menace.

But after an hour of absurd, lump-in-the-throat romanticism, the arrival of the enemy comes as something of a relief. The crashing of bombs and the whine of bullets at least pushes Hans Zimmer's oppressive score into the background, and, in a further service to humanity, quiets the thundering bombast of Randall Wallace's dialogue.

Nearly every line of the script drops from the actors' mouths with the leaden clank of exposition, timed with bad sitcom beats. According to the time-tested Bruckheimer formula, each heartfelt utterance must be soothed by a little joke; a moment of light-heartedness must resolve into a muffled choke of pathos. No shot seems to last more than five seconds, no scene more than a minute. People say only what is directly relevant to the movie's themes: ''If there are many more back home like you,'' a British officer tells one of the heroes, ''God help anyone who goes to war with America.''

The upstanding Yank tells him a bit later: ''We're not anxious to die. Just anxious to matter.''

The main narrative concerns two boyhood chums, Rafe McCawley and Danny Walker, who after a brief boyhood idyll in Tennessee grow into dashing flyboys played by Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett. Rafe is reckless and gallant, Danny a bit more shy. In 1941 they find themselves in a company of easily distinguished war-movie types: the stutterer, the would-be Lothario, the dumb guy and so on. (In earlier, less self-conscious times, they would also have been sorted by ethnic and regional background.) Their commander is Col. James Doolittle, one of a handful of real historical figures in the movie, played -- with a local news anchor's stentorian growl -- by Alec Baldwin, who seems ready to devour whatever matériel is left unscathed by the enemy's bombs.

The fliers soon meet their female counterparts, a gaggle of nurses similarly typed for easy recognition: the fat one, the boy-crazy blonde, the shy girl with glasses and so on. One of these, Evelyn Johnson (Kate Beckinsale), falls in love with Rafe after they meet cute during a physical exam. Suffering from what sounds like dyslexia, he is unable to sort out the letters on the eye chart, but after hearing his eloquent paean to his own flying skills, she passes him. (Curiously, his disability does not interfere with his ability to read and write love letters once he and Evelyn are separated by the war.)

She also jabs him in the rear end with an inoculation needle, and he passes out and breaks his nose, which sets up the following priceless exchange: He: ''You are so beautiful it hurts.'' She: ''It's your nose that hurts.'' He: ''No, it's my heart.'' (Me: ''No, it's my stomach.'')

Mr. Affleck and Ms. Beckinsale do what they can with their lines, and glow with the satiny shine of real movie stars. Mr. Hartnett's anxious inwardness plays effectively against Mr. Affleck's frat-boy bravado, and a few supporting players, notably James King, Dan Aykroyd and Tom Sizemore, are permitted a few seconds of real acting. But the script, and Mr. Bay's impatient direction, do not give anyone sufficient time or space to develop shadings of character. Instead of a story, the film provides data, telling you what it should show, suggest or leave implicit. Evelyn falsifies the eye exam because, she explains, her father was a pilot, too. Young Danny's father's mistreatment of his son is a result of trauma suffered in World War I.