Patriotism For Sale.(Brief Article)(Review)

It's tempting to lower standards when it comes to patriotic films. After all, Hollywood movies that honor love of country are few and far between, so shouldn't we be grateful for those we get?

Not in the case of Pearl Harbor. This big-budget bid for the summer blockbuster crown exploits patriotism the way other movies exploit violence or sex. Director Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, two of the crassest filmmakers in the business, spun sex and violence into box-office gold with hits such as The Rock and Armageddon, and here they've turned civic pride into another commodity.

Bay and Bruckheimer have fed the press a lot of bunk about wanting Pearl Harbor to honor American veterans, but what the two men are mostly after, however, is artistic respect (and the ticket receipts that often come with it). An action film at heart, Pearl Harbor wraps itself in the elaborate dress of a "prestige picture," from its bloated, three-hour running time to its epic scope. The movie opens with two little boys playing fighter pilots in a crop-duster, then jumps ahead to the eve of World War II, when Rafe McCawley (Ben Affleck) and Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett) are grown-up pilots in the U.S. Army Corps. Their friendship is put to the test when-they both fall for the same nurse, Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale).

In essence, Pearl Harbor borrows the formula that earned big money for Titanic: Drape a corny romance over a showcase action sequence. The attack itself is staged with surprising coherence by Bay, considering his usual technique of featuring explosions while vigorously shaking the camera. In addition to clever visual touches--including the camera dropping from the sky to follow a Japanese bomb--Bay steeps the sequence in classic portraits of Americana. When enemy Zeroes suddenly scream across the Hawaiian landscape, they cut into the Norman Rockwell-like scenes of a mother hanging laundry out to dry and boys playing baseball on a dusty field. Not just a military attack, but an assault on all it means to be an American.

Even if you appreciate the traditional values inherent in these images, you'll still likely cringe at the way they're used to manipulate the audience's emotions. The attack on ...