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By CHRIS GLADDEN SPECIAL TO
After all, Memorial Day is intended to honor all of the fallen U.S. servicemen and women, while Dec. 7 is traditionally set aside to mark our entry into World War II and honor those killed during the Japanese attack. Yet there's a TV special on Pearl Harbor, and magazine articles are devoted to the event more than six months shy of its 60th anniversary. The reason has to do with a a fairly new movie industry tradition. Memorial Day weekend is now regarded as the biggest movie opening weekend of the year, and the studios bring out the big guns of summer. Thus the movie "Pearl Harbor" and all the ensuing attention. This is the movie hyped to be the biggest of the summer, the one that scared every other studio away from a Memorial Day weekend opening. It's big all right, at three hours. It's visually impressive, the "Top Gun" of prop plane movies. It's also one of the more shamelessly manipulative movies in recent memory. While all that money was being poured into special effects, somebody should have hired a script doctor to get rid of some of the movie's many glaring ouchies. It begins in the 1920s, when two lads take a cropdusting plane for a joy ride and the big, bad father raises a ruckus when they land. These childhood friends grow up to be Army pilots before the outbreak of World War II . Rafe McCawley, played by Ben Affleck, is a daredevil with a learning disability who has to con his way into his pilot's wings. Affleck is definitely a star and an appealing actor, but this part calls for a combination of Gomer Pyle and Ronald Colman, and it's unlikely anyone could pull it off. Danny Walker, played by Josh Hartnett, is a little more on the cautious side and only has to play the best friend who betrays his buddy. Kate Beckinsale plays Evelyn Johnson, the nurse both men love. This is one of those melodramas that positions such romances in the middle of defining moments in history. Sometimes they work: consider "Gone with the Wind." In this case, director Michael Bay self-consciously makes every gesture either big, noble or downright corny. Pilots go on missions because "guys like us don't have a choice." Evelyn will never think of a sunset without thinking of Rafe. She says this very line while standing next to a gasoline pump that says Sunray gas. Bay and screenwriter Randall Wallace attempt to give some historical scope to the events surrounding the Japanese sneak attack. Jon Voight plays FDR. Alec Baldwin plays Jimmy Doolittle and Mako, in one of the movie's more restrained and effective pormances, plays Admiral Yamamoto. Cuba Gooding Jr. plays a young cook who mans the guns on one of the ships. Dan Aykroyd plays a Navy code breaker. Perhaps this bit of casting is an inside joke referring to "1941," the comedy set in Los Angeles during the Pearl Harbor attack. At the time it was one of the most expensive movies ever made. Some joke. Ha ha. Meanwhile Evelyn and the fly boys are surrounded by a gaggle of Archies and Jugheads and Bettys and Veronicas to act as a chorus to the melodrama at center stage. Typically, "Pearl Harbor" doesn't just deal with Pearl Harbor. Like "Forrest Gump" and "Zelig," the characters move on to other things, such as the Doolittle raid over Tokyo. Back in the old days, that would have been another movie. Pearl Harbor HH 1/2 A Touchstone Pictures release showing at Carmike 10 at Tanglewood Mall, Salem Valley 8, Valley View Grande 16 and the Grandin Theatre. Rated PG-13 for violence and language. Three hours.
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