Pearl Harbor (182mins, 12) Directed by Michael Bay; starring Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale
Some films are great, some have greatness thrust upon them, but, occasionally, greatness is just a big bowl of Hollywood hogwash. Remember Demetrius and the Gladiators, with the hulking Victor Mature getting God as others get stomach acid? Or The Conqueror, with John Wayne as a bow-legged Gengis Khan? Or The Black Knight, with Alan Ladd clanking round submerged in his suit of armour like a small sardine in a big can? Once seen, all of them, never forgotten. Memorable hilarities on the wilder shores of kitsch. And now there is Pearl Harbor.
Everyone thus far has been so busy hurling rotten tomatoes or erudite theses on the decline of Western civilisation through Michael Bay's window that you may, perhaps, not have realised what a writhing, gigglesome joy he's produced: 180 minutes and $140 million which go straight through the pain barrier into movie legend. This isn't some average, boring disaster - it's a stupendous, life-enhancing disaster, a ship lost gloriously with all hands and reputations.
There are no mysteries about its genesis. Somebody saw Titanic, counted the box office and decided to take the same powder. Can anyone please find me another global foul-up? Dunkirk, sir? Nah... too tiny, too Brit. Waterloo, sir? Nah... too European. Pearl Harbor? But that was our all-American foul-up. Where's the patriotism in that? Hang on, though. What if we make it a romance with some young hunk like Leonardo and an English rose like that Winslet dame, though, maybe, you know, a bit thinner? Then love could conquer all and we could hang out the flags at the end. Good thinking, sir.
And so, after a Disney investment roughly equalling the GDP of six African states, it came to pass. Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett are boyhood buddies from the boondocks turned fighter aces kicking their heels in Hawaii. Ben falls for Kate Beckinsale, a nurse who seems to double as a stick-insect fashion model, but promptly heads off to the white cliffs of Dover in search of a little action. 'Are there any more in America like you?' asks a wistful RAF captain. Alas, no, and, anyway, he is soon missing in action. Best friend Josh tumbles Kate on a bed of parachutes and produces a symptomless pregnancy. But who's that coming round the palm trees? Ben is not dead. He is alive. Meanwhile, there seem to be rather a lot of planes flying early this morning.
Implausible? Not as good as that. Randall Wallace's galumphing screenplay doesn't even try for plausibility. Kate meets Ben giving him an eye test, but Ben's dyslexic so he has to charm a pass mark out of her; 15 seconds later, he's writing her long, pining letters only Barbara Cartland could love. A miracle cure only rivalled by miracle stupidity. His sudden reappearance, back from the dead in the English Channel, presupposes that he couldn't find a telephone box.
Still, at least there is one consistent - and original - theme in there somewhere. This is the first Pacific war movie where you want the Japanese to win. That's not just because Titanic did so stunningly in the Tokyo market that Jerry Bruckheimer and Bay have to airbrush little local difficulties (like the invasion of China) away. Nor because Admiral Yamamoto stalks the decks of his aircraft-carrier like a wizened samurai pursued by avenging subtitles. 'If we achieve surprise, the Americans will offer little resistance.' 'That's brilliant, admiral.' 'No, a brilliant man would find a way not to fight a war.'
Rather, the Japanese deserve to triumph on merit. They're putting in the time. Their pilots run, disciplined, to their planes. Their leaders never sleep. Meanwhile, the boys and girls back at Pacific Fleet HQ are playing Animal House. They never do any work (apart from a few unauthorised joy flights with a dame on their lap). They booze and flirt and doss around wearing obnoxious flowered shirts. (Our heroes are blearily soused out of their minds as Rising Sun hordes sweep overhead.) Their doctors come over queasy at the sight of blood. Their generals are on the golf course. As torpedoes whizz through the harbour, spelling digital obliteration, no one in the next boat seems to wake up. Nobody (perhaps reinforcing Affleck) thinks to pick up a telephone. Dozy, thick, shambolic, natural victims in a world crying out for National Missile Defence.
The sole voice of intelligence at the top tables is played - not for laughs - by Dan Aykroyd. 'They're going to hit us where it hurts us most,' he observes presciently. Got any evidence, oh all-seeing one? 'Well, it's what I would do.' Most telling of the lot, perhaps, is the casting of Jon Voight, pavilioned in latex, as President Roosevelt. He always plays villains these days; it's how you pay the mortgage at his age.
Be fair, in charity, to the cast. They're cardboard characters given cardboard to mouth. Affleck's flat phizog, filmed in malignant close-up, registers only alarm and constipation. Beckinsale's controlled intelligence doesn't remotely equip her for innocent warmth; you spend most of the time admiring her lacquered lips and bridgework. Hartnett, required only to look constantly hangdog, survives best because his part is hangdog in, hangdog out. Cuba Gooding Jr is the hapless black in this minstrel show. There are 40 minutes of special effects which, too, have a slightly cardboard feel, a bloodless computer pump ing. Richard Fleischer's Tora! Tora! Tora! did them just as spectacularly and more realistically 30 years back.
Hey, sir! We gotta end on an up. There ain't nothing to feel happy/sad about here. And so, at the close, Ben and Josh are picked by Alec Baldwin, a legend called Doolittle, to go on the raid which dropped a few bombs on Tokyo. 'We have only awakened the sleeping giant,' proclaims a fearful Yamamoto. One hero perishes; one comes home. Kate gets out her lipstick.
As travesties go, it's huge, huge fun. Some of my chums in the critics' circle are beating their breasts with disgust, looking at the first zillion-dollar week-end take in America and announcing the death of cinema as art. Cheer up, chaps, the popcorn legions know what they're doing. Eat your pectorals out, Victor Mature. This is so bad, it's good. This is a real disaster.
Philip French is away
