The lifelong friendship between Rafe McCawley and Danny Walker is put to the ultimate test when the two ace fighter pilots become entangled in a love triangle with beautiful Naval nurse Evelyn Johnson. But the rivalry between the friends-turned-foes is immediately put on hold when they find themselves at the center of Japan's devastating attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
For all the 118 actors listed, the movie offers almost no sense of authentic humanity. The faces the filmmakers plaster on their characters are as flat and stereotyped as those on war-recruitment posters.
– David Germain,
Associated Press,
27 May 2014
rotten:
Pearl Harbor is a bomb, make no mistake. But the movie is such a noisy, persistent bomb that it is guaranteed to draw a crowd.
– Jami Bernard,
New York Daily News,
27 May 2014
rotten:
The effect of watching a Michael Bay film is indistinguishable from having a large, pointy lump of rock drop on your head. His new picture, Pearl Harbor, maintains the mood.
– Anthony Lane,
New Yorker,
28 May 2014
fresh:
The best way to see the movie is as I did: expecting nothing and being pleasantly surprised, and strangely moved, by Mr. Bay's audacity in filming his lovers in end-of-the-world close-ups, however briefly.
– Andrew Sarris,
New York Observer,
28 May 2014
rotten:
Pearl Harbor is a blockheaded, hollow-hearted industrial enterprise.