Post by Dave Homewood on Jan 4, 2008 8:47:30 GMT 12
Last week the dreaded film Pearl Harbor was on TV, and reluctantly I decided to watch it with the express reason of trying to disect where it went horribly wrong. I made notes along the way, and have many points that I'd like to bring up and see what others think about it.
First I'll bring up a couple of the points that I think were good about the film; there are not that many sadly...
Positive Point One - I think John Voight did a very good job in the role of Franklin Roosevelt. I usually don't like him as an actor but feel he exceeded himself here. A pity most others didn't.
Positive Point Two - I also think that Cuba Gooding Junior played his part very well, and made the lead actors look like te amateurs they are.
Positive Point Three - it was really amazing how the film makers managed to make Pearl harbor look the way it used to, and got so many ships and aircraft together, etc. Yes a lot of it was CGI, but some of it was real. I think some of the special effects were good, like when the ship capsized, etc. The bit part actors were good, and some of these scenes looked better than even Tora Tora Tora. Just some of them...
Now....
Onto the negative points. Some of these I am not sure about so will have to check facts.
- In the beginning the protagonists are boys, and one's father is a crop duster pilot. My first thoughts were a) were they dusting crops that early in the century (late 1920's)? And b) did they have Stearmans in the late 1920's?
- Next we see them at a flying school. This school must have been the equivalent of what the RNZAF called a Fighter Operational Training Unit. Would P-40E's have been used by pilots at a (F) OTU in january 1941, I'm not sure. We see these two boobs play chicken with their P-40's. I'm sure that this act if performed by trainee pilots in the RNZAF would have had both pilots grounded and cashiered from the service, and as the USAAC was still then at peace and these are professional pilots, not conscripts, that's even more reason to ground them.
- The instructor was meant to be General Doolittle. Did he instruct fighter pilots in january 1941? According to the internet he'd gone to England in August 1940 to gather info on the war, and when he returned he obviously reported back the info from this special mission. Did he have time between this mission and Pearl Harbor (when he began planning for the Hornet raid) to go and instruct new pilots?
- Many people have dissed the film for having Ben Asslick fighting in the Battle of Britain. Well in defence of an indefencible film, he wasn't fighting in the Battle itself, the film clearly shows the date of January 1941 when he's training at New York. He then goes to England and joins an Eagle Squadron. Wikipedia says "The first Eagle Squadron (No. 71) was formed in September 1940, and became operational for defensive duties on 5 February 1941." So this is plausable. The fact that it shows Spitfires shooting down Heinkels is also possible, the air raids on Great Britain didn't stop in October 1940. I still think the whole piece is irrelevant crap and the things that annoy me most about this section of the film are:
- The RAF Squadron has a chateau-like builking as backdrop, indicating the researchers watched either the first five minutes of Batle of Britain or Piece of Cake and assumed this is what RAF stations had on them... not realising all the scenes with chateaus were Battle of France!!
- The English actors are all caked with soot, as if their Spitfires and Hurricanes (it's an oddly mixed squadron of aircraft...) smoke like steam trains
- The code markings on the Spitfires are all the same! What the hell? I think from memory in one scene they're all marked RF-D. Was that the prop man's initials?
- Some of the scenes of ten or so Spitfires flying in formation over Dover were actually quite good, and they actually were probably the first film to show the cordite smoke and shells coming out when the guns fired. The battle scens were a little overdone though. And why of why oh why did they write that awful repeating line into the script, "Hammer down!". Aaagh
Oh and I forgot, that irritating scene where the bring in the Queen Mary, what was that all about? By 1941 the Queen Mary was a troopship, surely security would have been much better and they'd not have left that scaffold thing just unattended there for any idiot to climb aboard. Plus as a troopship it was painted grey, not black.
I habve loads more, but I'll let you chew these ones over for now... what do you think?
I will add, isn't is dad that till 2001 the words 'Pearl Harbor' conjured up thoughts of a daring Japanese attack, a sad day for the US and the world, the beginning of all out war in the Pacific, etc. Now it just conjurs up 'shit film'.
First I'll bring up a couple of the points that I think were good about the film; there are not that many sadly...
Positive Point One - I think John Voight did a very good job in the role of Franklin Roosevelt. I usually don't like him as an actor but feel he exceeded himself here. A pity most others didn't.
Positive Point Two - I also think that Cuba Gooding Junior played his part very well, and made the lead actors look like te amateurs they are.
Positive Point Three - it was really amazing how the film makers managed to make Pearl harbor look the way it used to, and got so many ships and aircraft together, etc. Yes a lot of it was CGI, but some of it was real. I think some of the special effects were good, like when the ship capsized, etc. The bit part actors were good, and some of these scenes looked better than even Tora Tora Tora. Just some of them...
Now....
Onto the negative points. Some of these I am not sure about so will have to check facts.
- In the beginning the protagonists are boys, and one's father is a crop duster pilot. My first thoughts were a) were they dusting crops that early in the century (late 1920's)? And b) did they have Stearmans in the late 1920's?
- Next we see them at a flying school. This school must have been the equivalent of what the RNZAF called a Fighter Operational Training Unit. Would P-40E's have been used by pilots at a (F) OTU in january 1941, I'm not sure. We see these two boobs play chicken with their P-40's. I'm sure that this act if performed by trainee pilots in the RNZAF would have had both pilots grounded and cashiered from the service, and as the USAAC was still then at peace and these are professional pilots, not conscripts, that's even more reason to ground them.
- The instructor was meant to be General Doolittle. Did he instruct fighter pilots in january 1941? According to the internet he'd gone to England in August 1940 to gather info on the war, and when he returned he obviously reported back the info from this special mission. Did he have time between this mission and Pearl Harbor (when he began planning for the Hornet raid) to go and instruct new pilots?
- Many people have dissed the film for having Ben Asslick fighting in the Battle of Britain. Well in defence of an indefencible film, he wasn't fighting in the Battle itself, the film clearly shows the date of January 1941 when he's training at New York. He then goes to England and joins an Eagle Squadron. Wikipedia says "The first Eagle Squadron (No. 71) was formed in September 1940, and became operational for defensive duties on 5 February 1941." So this is plausable. The fact that it shows Spitfires shooting down Heinkels is also possible, the air raids on Great Britain didn't stop in October 1940. I still think the whole piece is irrelevant crap and the things that annoy me most about this section of the film are:
- The RAF Squadron has a chateau-like builking as backdrop, indicating the researchers watched either the first five minutes of Batle of Britain or Piece of Cake and assumed this is what RAF stations had on them... not realising all the scenes with chateaus were Battle of France!!
- The English actors are all caked with soot, as if their Spitfires and Hurricanes (it's an oddly mixed squadron of aircraft...) smoke like steam trains
- The code markings on the Spitfires are all the same! What the hell? I think from memory in one scene they're all marked RF-D. Was that the prop man's initials?
- Some of the scenes of ten or so Spitfires flying in formation over Dover were actually quite good, and they actually were probably the first film to show the cordite smoke and shells coming out when the guns fired. The battle scens were a little overdone though. And why of why oh why did they write that awful repeating line into the script, "Hammer down!". Aaagh
Oh and I forgot, that irritating scene where the bring in the Queen Mary, what was that all about? By 1941 the Queen Mary was a troopship, surely security would have been much better and they'd not have left that scaffold thing just unattended there for any idiot to climb aboard. Plus as a troopship it was painted grey, not black.
I habve loads more, but I'll let you chew these ones over for now... what do you think?
I will add, isn't is dad that till 2001 the words 'Pearl Harbor' conjured up thoughts of a daring Japanese attack, a sad day for the US and the world, the beginning of all out war in the Pacific, etc. Now it just conjurs up 'shit film'.
the flying sequences for my own project.
