Pearl Harbor is a film about a truly pathetic love triangle. And nothing else. If you like soppy, on-the-nose dialogue being given a false sense of significance thanks to a near constant orchestral soundtrack and tight camera angles, go kill yourself. But coincidentally, that's what this film is full of.

The film is about two best friends who are also pilots in the army during World War II, and they both love the same girl. One of them falls in love with the girl, then dies, and then other one jumps into bed with her, but then it turns out the other one isn't dead. And while this story is playing out, the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor.

The cringe-fest starts when Ben Affleck goes for an eye test and gets friendly with the nurse. And by friendly I mean he stalks her. He meets her outside somewhere with a bottle of champaign and when he opens it the cork hits him in the nose and it starts to bleed. She tilts his head back (good nursing) and he says his nose hurts and that she's beautiful. Then he says that his heart hurts and they have a smooch. I'm going to have to try that one. "Nurse, my heart hurts. Can we kiss?". I'd get defibrillatored into next week.

The film is very American (as you would expect). In the film, England is just a manor house with some planes and grubby looking men on the lawn. One of the British soldiers even says "Good luck to anyone who goes to war with America." I was almost sick.

The film is littered with cheesy lines pre-empting the attack. At one point a nurse is talking about how many men are on board the ships. It's so blatant she might as well have said "Wouldn't it be a shame if they all got blown up in a few minutes."

Josh Hartnett plays the other man in the film. After Affleck dies, he falls in love with the woman. The trouble is that there's no slow progression of them falling for each other. You'd think there'd be a real struggle of morals versus heart, but you'd be wrong. All he does is pop round to her house, then take her flying in a plane, then take her for a shag in the most inappropriately stored parachutes ever. Harnett uses some smooth talking to seal the deal on the relationship, saying that he saw a sunset so that means they should be together. He could use that for anything. "I saw a sunset so you should make me a sandwich." I don't understand why it's so easy for those two to get it on with each other though, considering she supposedly loved Affleck so much, and Hartnett has a major bromance going on with him. They were fucking each other before he was even cold.

The big climax of the film is the attack on Pearl Harbor, and for me it got boring quickly. It's just uninspired shots of explosions for half an hour. It's pretty much just in the film so that the two men have a reason to go away together. And, of course, Americans would lap it up.

I also didn't like how it carried on cutting to the Japanese planning the attack, as it took away the element of surprise. I feel it would have carried a lot more punch if it genuinely did come as a surprise.

There's a silly bit where Affleck and Hartnet are on an airfield. Affleck tells all the men to stay down and not move while the Japanese planes are over head, as though in doing this, the Japanese wouldn't realise it was an airfield.

Roosevelt makes a heartfelt speech about how the US needs to make a counter attack, and to convince everyone he stands up out of his wheelchair. Because no-one is going to tell a disabled person they're wrong. Even if it means lots of people will die. No-one wants to be that guy.

Alec Baldwin plays the general, and he's full of sentimental bullshit. He has a very clichéd delivery. "You're a crazy bastard!! But I like it." "You put everyone in the company at risk!! But it was the right thing to do." "You didn't knock on the door before you came in!! Luckily I had my pants on." It gets old fast.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor (yes, it carries on for a whole hour after that), Baldwin puts together a crack team of pilots for a secret mission to Japan. This involves learning to take off from a short distance, and this is achieved easily by having lots of shots of men standing around looking cool in leather jackets.

Once they've done the Japan shooting bit, Hartnett crashes his plane and somehow survives. Affleck goes over to do one of the soppiest "Don't die!" speeches ever. He mentions that Hartnett is going to be a father, in a pathetic attempt to get our sympathy. The thing is, the whole pregnancy thing is hardly mentioned in the film so it doesn't really hit home. If they aren't going to establish something before they try and use it to work our emotions, he might as well have said "You can't die! Who's going to sing the special song you wrote for the Somalian quadruple amputee you adopted so that she can get a precious few minutes of sleep and escape her horrific existence of constant flash-backs to the 7 years of rape and abuse she was subjected to by her schizophrenic father." Gets me every time.

The girl in the film is just not likeable to the point of bitch. All she does when Affleck comes back into her life is wait for one of them to die so she doesn't have to make a decision.

The trouble with this film is, at its root, that it's shit. The first hour and a half is setting up a soppy, badly written love story; then the attack on Pearl Harbor comes and the romantic story is forgotten about. Then afterwards it picks it back up again to finish it off. It's like they had an interlude for some explosions. You never get back into the love story in the way you're supposed to after the attack either, because firstly, you've kind of forgotten about it, and secondly, you feel like the film should have ended after the attack. The counter attack on Japan only exists so that it could badly wrap up the love story, and so that America didn't come out of the film looking too helpless. The film isn't concerned with Pearl Harbor at all; it's just a framing device for the love triangle.

The whole film is very bad and unoriginal. It's like Titanic meets Saving Private Ryan.
In a dark alley.
And Michael Bay is there with a bat.