Tuesday 25 April 2017

Review: Pearl Harbor

So I've been watching alot of films that people have told me to ages ago, but I never got round to it. This film is one of them, plus it has Kate Beckinsale in and she's an actress that doesn't get talked about enough, well from what I think anyway. Its also a Period Drama set in the 1940s and who doesn't love that? What the film is about is a love triangle between childhood best friends Rafe, Danny, and Nurse Evelyn played by Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale, all during the run up and battle and aftermath of Pearl Harbor.
That's basically it, in terms of the story line purpose of it all, its just a love story during the war. The reviews of this film I saw, and the ratings it got on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB was just ridiculous basically its an either average film or crap film. But don't take that as gospel truth because its a matter of opinion at the end of the day. I do agree its not the best film I've ever seen, I mean I love the costumes but thats a given and the battle action scenes of Pearl Harbor, but again with the budget they had and it was apparently a bigger budget that actual Pearl Harbor itself. I mean that could be hear'say but the money was showing on the screen definitely. 
In terms of characters and storyboard wise, I hated it. I love the actors in this film, I think they're brilliant and have no doubt can act, as I've seen them in better roles and better films. I hated Kate Beckinsale's character Evelyn she was just so wet and she had a really crap personality. I couldn't relate to her and usually I will try to find anything in a character that I can relate to, even a Villian or the Hero but with her I just couldn't. I found her bland and with a love story I don't know about you guys but I wanna fall in love with one of the couples, but I didn't like her at all. The only positive thing I can say about her is first of all its not Kate Beckinsale's fault its the writers, and she looked beautiful in the film her costumes to her hair and makeup, but that's being a model not an actor and in her defence, she's an actor she turned up did the job very well and got paid then went home.
I didn't get Danny and Rafe, they again were extremely bland and irritating brilliantly acted but I hated the script it felt very robotic and it became a little too slick. Some minor characters were just awful, Jennifer Garner played a part of a nurse in this and I didn't like at all, she was this stereotypical awkward nerd and I didn't get what kinda part she played, was it supposed to be comical? Because I didn't find it funny at all. There were some characters that died and not to sound horrible, but I didn't care I didn't like them at all. They all seemed very generic, boring, bland just really crap uninteresting characters. It's gonna sound abit weird but I'm actually glad that I've found a film that I don't like because I always try to find the positive side to films with this I did, but the majority of which I care about films which is the story line and characters both of which this film just lacked in. 
You could tell that this film was trying to be the Titanic of its time, it being a Period Drama and a Romance with a big budget its obvious what it was trying to be. I don't hate that but I just felt with it being Pearl Harbor they could've had more substance to it like they could have given Evelyn more of a backbone and made Danny and Rafe less pushovers. One thing was all three characters were on the same level in terms of strength and blandness. I loved the action scenes but they had to spend money on them because history nerds would throw a hissy fit and a riot would happen saying that 'Its not accurate!' now that does annoy me because of course its not going to be 100% accurate to the event its a film! its done in a filmmakers mind and put out there in a story. If you want accuracy of an event or a person then watch a documentary about it or read a book. Although there was inaccuracy in this film, but I mean again that's gonna happen, just like with book to film adaptations. 

I feel like this film showed me that just because a film has a big budget doesn't mean its automatically gonna be an amazing film. Because with the big action scenes, and the amazing costumes and extras and all that, if the story isn't good and the characters aren't relatable then no matter how big the budget it means nothing if the plot is crap, then its a crap film. Because in my opinion a great film is a brilliantly written story line and fantastic characters, nothing to do with budgets or genres thats how I feel about it anyway. The technicality of the film with the shots and camera technique was brilliant. I love the flip between the panoramic shot to it being from a soldier's perspective or an injured person's perspective. I would've preferred abit more consistency with the shots and camera technique. 
Also and this is gonna make me sound like an old lady but the film was way too long that what it should be, its 3 Hours long and that's quite long in terms of film I think the only film I know that's that long is Lord Of The Rings, but that's based of a book that's huge. I know that this film is based of the Pearl Harbor and is very important in history but I don't think it should take that long. As I've seen War films and they're not that long and have way more added on to them than this film. Overall I liked some aspects of this film, but not the reasons as to why I love films like story line and characters. 

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Maira Gall