I don't really understand why this movie has such poor reviews. It is definetely worth seeing. The romance is great, with a lot of details right - about subtle feelings in different situations. Yes, it is a movie, not a documentary - so fighting scenes are not realistic - LIKE IN ALL MOVIES. I actually enjoyed this movie a lot. I love WW2 movies, and also this kind of intense romance movies. If you enjoyed Top Gun, The Notebook, then you'll love this movie.

The Second World War is undoubtedly the conflict that cinema most portrayed. The movie list is almost inexhaustible but the good movies list is much smaller, and I don't know if "Pearl Harbor" can enter that list. Addressing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the main American military port in the Pacific at the time, the film has huge cons. Michael Bay tried to focus on realism, historical accuracy, romance (the lead story is a love triangle, in which two childhood friends engage the same girl) and special effects, trying to do something different and better than it's direct competitors, with whom it would inevitably be compared (for example, the enshrined "Tora Tora Tora" or the more recent "Saving Private Ryan").But despite all the hard work, the film exaggerates so much in everything that has lost quality. For example, the love story that links all events (ranging from the Battle of Britain to the Doolittle Raid) is so sappy and cliched that it seems to have been copied from a cheap novel or a soap opera. The film is so sugary that it was even compared to "Titanic" because of that. To make things worse, the characters are so poorly constructed that the audience never really cares about them. What interest does it have if that girl dates one of those guys, the two, or goes to a convent? Although they gained notoriety with this film, Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale were not able to shine at all and I think they will not carry good memories of this film. Other problems in the script are the "black-and-white" perspective of war and world, and the inability to portray facts outside the "canonical version" of the story: Americans are the good guys, who were quiet in their corner, japs are the bad guys who treacherously attacked that little Hawaiian paradise. Although the film shows that there was an imminent danger of an attack and that statement was discredited, it never shows the great interest that the US (and Roosevelt) really had in being attacked, in order to finally be able to fully justify the entering into a war that would make economy (still trying to get back up from the 1929 crash) make a lot of money. We know that there are even indications that the US provoked Japan in order to be attacked. The film ignores all this, preferring to portray American heroism, but historical accuracy shouldn't be limited to the choice of an airplane or paint for a ship, but must also (and mainly) be used in the way the story is told to the public. That didn't happen here.If the script is bad and very fragile, the film improves when we observe the technical questions. The special effects are good, the state of the art when the film was released, but they end up catching your attention so grandly that you stop believing what you see. You don't feel the danger, you know they will survive by a hair, threading the plane through a hole in a needle or by some other unbelievable way. Then you just watch and expect them to finish playing with the planes and blow things up. The soundtrack is forgettable, and the best are in fact a few hits from the Forties that were introduced in the film.

People these days are intellectually lazy and their understanding of history comes from movies, not from libraries. Pearl Harbor is not only inaccurate but it is an insult to those who died.If this were 100% fiction it would be a great movie. The thing that ruins it for me (and others of my generation who had relatives that died there) is that the actors were like children playing dress-up, who were working for producers, a writer, and a director whose understanding of things was sophomoric, juvenile, and artificial. There was virtually no research done on life, fashion, and sensibilities of the people of that era. The BS of the two pilots was wildly disrespectful to the two real-life pilots who responded during the attack, and to then pretend that these two fictional fighter guys would suddenly be flying bombers is both stupid and disrespectful to the real Tokyo raiders. If you want to see a good film on Pearl Harbor, watch Tora Tora Tora. Not only does it represent the truth, but it also shows things from both the American and Japanese sides. The film Pearl Harbor is just a popcorn movie. I certainly hope that viewers do not take the wild departures from the truth to represent history, because it doesn't.

Completely non spoiler review: See this movie and don't read the other reviews. They are, in my humble opinion, not reviewing a movie. They are nit picking a historical account, sometimes based on their own biases and sometimes based on their disappointment in what really happened! For example, yes, there is a token black guy. THEY WERE ALL TOKEN BLACK GUYS BACK THEN! It's called discrimination. It still exists! How is that Michael Bay's fault? Anyway, watch this movie to see a good movie with amazing effects, likable characters, enough history to teach you something (if you don't know the history behind Pearl Harbor) and the best ending this movie could possibly have.Mildly spoiler review (but if you know your history, this is not a surprise: Japan attacked the USA at Pearl Harbor in 1941!):When I was a boy, my father took me to see the story of the Pearl Harbor attack in the movie "Tora, Tora, Tora". I still remember the room shaking as the planes took off from the deck! I looked up at my dad with a huge smile on my face. Yes, that was a good movie. More like a documentary than a movie. At the end of the movie I felt empty. Was that it? I was about 10 years old and confused (also disturbed by the scene where the son lands his plane all bloody and screaming). My dad then explained to me that we (the USA) won the war and etc, etc, etc. But the scene at the end with the 2 military guys just chatting was so weirdly confident to me. Didn't they realize they just had lost thousands of men to a rotten sneak attack? There were no characters throughout the whole movie to get emotionally attached to, just like a documentary.Fast forward about 25 years. My wife and I went to the movies and saw Pearl Harbor. I loved it. I've seen in about 4 times now and still love this movie. The scenes were excellent, the characters likable and the emotion felt right. A good balance of respect for the subject matter and the true parts of the story. If you don't know the story, the movie tells you. But, unlike Tora, Tora, Tora, they weren't trying to make a documentary, and they included some relatively minor characters (like the "token black guy" some other reviewers are upset about (should he not have been included at all?!?) and Michael Bay found a way to include an excellent story about a lesser known story: the Doolittle raid and he ended on that note instead of just the defeat at Pearl Harbor. Frankly, a brilliant way to tell both stories and have the audience leave feeling better about the story.I realize I'm in the minority here, but I'm confused about what people hated so much about this movie and I can't wrap my head around it. I read a couple dozen reviews and it seems to me that they just can't understand that they are watching a movie, not a documentary.I thought the acting was good, the music great and the action scenes fantastic. And, I am a history buff and have read many WW2 books, including the entire series written by Winston Churchill, so yes, I knew where Pearl Harbor wasn't completely accurate. Had it been, Micheal Bay could have called it "Tora, Tora, Tora" and the haters would have blasted him for just doing a remake of that movie.The nitpicking in the reviews about "that model jeep was not being used in that year" and "that guy's name was misspelled" and "this US 5$ bill not yet in circulation in that year" and "those are not the exact two guys who flew the planes" are hilarious. In 2001, the attack on Pearl Harbor was 50 years old. What percentage of the movie goers would have any idea about these details? Could Michael Bay have been less lazy and/or more accurate? Sure. If you want to see the exact story, the History Channel has some excellent programs. If you want to see a great movie, which is about 85% historically accurate and captures the zeitgeist of the times it portrays, watch this movie: Pearl Harbor is excellent.