Pearl Harbor

Buena Vista Pictures | Release Date: May 25, 2001

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

44	METASCORE Mixed or average reviews based on 35 Critic Reviews

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Mixed:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

100

Kevin Thomas

The film's immense cast and crew, headed by director Michael Bay, writer Randall Wallace and stars Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale, blend artistry and technology to create a blockbuster entertainment that has passion, valor and tremendous action. Read full review

Mick LaSalle

It expertly capitalizes on the emotional associations Americans have with Pearl Harbor and renders the battle scenes with an excellence that goes beyond proficiency and into the realm of art. Read full review

William Arnold

The cast is engaging, the overall visual effects are tremendous and I found myself fairly swept away for most of the fast-moving, three-hour running time. Read full review

Jay Carr

The film never quite hits a sure-footed stride. The fictional love story stays fictional. But ''Pearl Harbor'' delivers the main event.

Stephen Hunter

Until a disappointing tailspin in the last hour, Pearl Harbor is the best piece of popular entertainment to come along in years. Read full review

David Ansen

Ninety minutes into this massive movie the attack commences, and the spectacular images come hurtling like fireballs. This is, let's be honest, what we're here for, and what most Jerry Bruckheimer-produced movies serve up best: the poetry of destruction. Read full review

Film.comSean Means

Parts of this three-hour World War II epic are brilliant -- especially the 40-minute sequence in which the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor is stunningly re-created. Read full review

Owen Gleiberman

The picture is nearly painstaking in its traditionalism, a tale of love, war, and valor in which nostalgia for ''simpler times'' gets mashed together, almost fetishistically, with nostalgia for old movies and for the spirit of knightly self sacrifice during World War II. Read full review

Michael Wilmington

A movie meant to explode off the screen -- and it's at its best when those explosions are going full blast. Read full review

New Times (L.A.)Robert Wilonsky

It's war porn, a movie that revels in the carnage. Read full review

Dana Stevens

Works best as a bang-and- boom action picture, a loud symphony of bombardment and explosion juiced up with frantic editing and shiny computer-generated imagery. Read full review

Shawn Levy

It's a Ritalin-deprived sensibility, but it keeps you skating over the dull spots, in which the film unfortunately is rich. Read full review

Marc Savlov

A crowd-pleasing blockbuster if ever there was one, features as its centerpiece a jaw-droppingly vivid re-creation of the Japanese attack on the U.S.'s fabled (and extremely vulnerable, as it turned out) Pacific fleet. Read full review

Stephanie Zacharek

"Pearl Harbor" is exactly the kind of prestige project you'd expect from a director like Bay, hitting all its targets with plodding precision and never once achieving surprise. Read full review

TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh

Clearly, neither screenwriter Randall Wallace nor director Michael Bay ever met a cliche he didn't embrace. Read full review

Peter Rainer

For all its agonizing true-life trappings, has the staying power of a grand-scale video game. Manhattan's sushi bars are in no danger of going dark. Read full review

Lawrence Toppman

The filmmakers would have been better advised to stick with the Zeroes and spend less time making up heroes. Read full review

Carrie Rickey

A script with the most underdeveloped characters and spectacularly realized visuals since "Titanic."

Jami Bernard

The 2,400 Americans who lost their lives at Pearl Harbor deserve a nobler memorial than this sentimental hogwash that reduces heroism to "Top Gun" antics and pretty cinematography. Read full review

Lou Lumenick

Unfortunately, the bulk of the three-hour epic is third-rate schmaltz that pays only lip service to history. Read full review

Mike Clark

It's an extravaganza worth seeing once -- and maybe later on DVD. Read full review

Rene Rodriguez

With all the obvious work that went into this beautifully detailed, giant-scale movie, and considering the historical importance of the subject matter, was it too much to ask for a trace of intelligence, or maturity, or even insight?

Jonathan Rosenbaum

If you decide to hit the concessions stand (where you're bound to have lots of company), I'd suggest going out for popcorn during either the first hour or the third, because the second features some pretty good big-screen effects involving planes, ships, and explosions. Read full review

J. Hoberman

The chaos is convincing, but, less ruthless than Steven Spielberg, Bay eschews D-day panic and mutilation. Read full review

Ella Taylor

A Michael Bay movie: bang bang, paper-thin characters, wooden screenplay. Read full review

Richard Schickel

The net result of this mighty effort is perhaps predictable: near total inconsequence.

David Edelstein

I found "Pearl Harbor" annoying but not excruciating—even at three hours, it's less assaultive than either "The Mummy Returns" or "Moulin Rouge." Read full review

Peter Travers

The film has no soul. An epic about this day of infamy should shake you to the core. But the real infamy about Pearl Harbor is that when you exit, you don't feel a thing. Read full review

Mr. ShowbizCody Clark

What comes before and after the sound and fury of the bombing raid are reams of banal dialogue.

Roger Ebert

Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. Read full review

Desson Thomson

Perhaps they should have called this "Bore-a, Bore-a, Bore-a." Read full review

Todd McCarthy

Just compare their superficiality to the complex characters in "From Here to Eternity" and what's missing here becomes terribly clear. Read full review

David Sterritt

Fiction and fantasy to evade reflection on the world we actually live in. Read full review

Michael Sragow

A brain-dead buddy-movie tearjerker with semi-tasteful romance and tasteful gore mixed in with the derring-do.

Joe Morgenstern

Littered with low points -- lame comedy, dubious history, fumbling drama and a love story so inept as to make a pacifist long for war.