Starring: Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale,
Cuba Gooding Jr, Alec Baldwin
Directed by: Michael Bay Running time: Three hours and 3 minutes

Americans were rightly appalled when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The key event in American history that served as a rude, but instructive awakening now gets the bland popcorn treatment.

It is no secret that the team of director Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer has no equal in making dumb, indulgent onscreen fun. Judging by their last effort, that is what they should stick to.

Pearl Harbor was intended to be their flirtation with epic filmmaking. They get it right in terms of length (183 minutes) and exuberance, and that's about it. A diplomat would say that what the film lacks in resonance and depth is made up for by its ambition and scale but that it fails to command any emotional involvement on the part of the viewer. A regular moviegoer with a conventional grasp of history would simply call it phony.

Here is a brief description of the film by Roger Ebert, the famed Chicago Sun-Times critic: "Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how, on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle." This looks like the regular cheerful sarcasm critics tend to indulge in, but the saddest thing is that this brief review is straight to the point.

For lack of any better redeeming quality of the film, you can sit and observe how a crucially important historical event that killed more than 3,000 people degenerates into a remarkably dull and equally unbelievable setup for a love predicament. It involves three young people who look as detached as only actors with a bad dialogue can be.

The romantic thread that takes about 10 times more screen time than it should, involves the following: Rafe and Danny (Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett), childhood friends, become fighter pilots. Rafe falls for nurse Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale); Rafe joins the British RAF because he wants to be a hero; Rafe is reported dead. Naturally, Evelyn and Danny engineer a mutual carnal consolation for themselves, diligently edited to the tune of PG 13 directives. Of course, Rafe is not dead and reports back to Evelyn's arms only to find himself the losing part of the status quo.

Finally, 80 minutes into the film, the actual attack takes place. That takes another 40 minutes of redundant effects that are shot in soft focus to mask the gory bits. After those 40 minutes have ended you feels as though you have played a computer game rather than seen the onscreen depiction of a despicable massacre.

The remainder of the film uses the ensuing historical events to provide a remarkably symmetrical solution to the threesome's heartaches - with the right degree of tragedy, of course. The most ironic part is the fact that Bruckheimer and Bay are having the last laugh. They concede that Pearl Harbor is no Oscar contender whilst enjoying the incoming royalty checks. Official statistics show that Pearl Harbor was the biggest summer hit of 2001. It has grossed over $431 million worldwide, outstripping other blockbusters which are either better films (Dreamworks' Shrek) or at least fairer in their intent (The Mummy Returns). The statistics also show that outside America, Pearl Harbor has performed best in Germany and Japan, the two countries that are the villains in the film. I wonder where this world is heading.