You are here > Home Film Reviews War Movies World War II Pearl Harbor
Sun 05 Feb 2012
Pearl Harbor PDF Print E-mail
Written by Alexander Zaitchik   
Sunday, 28 December 2008 14:00

Tags: Ben Affleck | Cuba Gooding Jr. | Jon Voight | Josh Hartnett | Kate Beckinsale | Michael Bay

Hey kids, remember Good Will Hunting?

Pearl HarborRemember all the references to Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn that butt buddies Ben Affleck and Matt Damon put into the script they famously wrote together?

Remember all the hype about the "integrity" of these independent young stars with liberal/radical politics? You do? Good; now you can drag the symbolic icon of those memories over to the trash bin of a face that is no-talent sell-out f*ck Ben Affleck.

Yes, the same Ben Affleck that used to name drop his relationship with Howard Zinn in self-serving interviews; the same Ben Affleck that now makes fireworks and apple pie propaganda that represents with a vengeance everything Zinn has fought against for fifty years. Namely, the mythologizing of America's past so that complexities are drained, crimes whitewashed and the official line left unchallenged.

Howard Zinn actually has a whole chapter on Pearl Harbor and the origins of the Pacific War in his classic A People's History of the United States, a book Affleck once claimed to be "deeply influenced by."

Zinn's take (along with most historians) on the events of December 7th, 1941 - in which the Japanese attacked an offshore colonial military base only after the screws were deliberately put on them by the US with oil and scrap metal embargoes - is nowhere to be found amid all the proud flags and handsome flyboys of Randall Wallace's spectacle/stupidfest... but so what, right?

Pearl Harbor (there are nice extras on the Two-Disc 60th Anniversary Commemorative Edition)is just a movie and not a history lesson I can hear certain Thinkers screaming into their maly pivos. Okay, fine, it's just a movie. But its also just a movie that SUCKS THE SLIME OUT OF USED ADULT DIAPERS.

The love story is soap opera-lite-lite and the dialogue an exhaustive compendium of BSE brained cliches. There is also what has become the obligatory feel-good black American patriot who gets a Navy Cross (are we really supposed to get misty-eyed over this in 2001???), and the enormous fact that 145 million USD was spent on this giant crapheap while children starve is a hard one to block out of the mind.

Two good things, just so you can't say Thinky lacks balance: the action scenes deliver and John Voigt (AKA Joe Buck AKA Midnight Cowboy) plays FDR, which is so awesome and so ridiculous it made me smile, even if Affleck and the rest of the sad pack involved in this travesty makes me want to pull a Columbine at their next shoot.

Thinky says: Ben Affleck is so truly lame it boggles the bulb.


blog comments powered by Disqus
Last Updated on Wednesday, 07 January 2009 04:59
 

Our valuable member Alexander Zaitchik has been with us since Saturday, 20 December 2008.

Show Other Articles Of This Author

More movie features

Q & A with Hugh Laurie
01 Apr 2009

Thespian, author, musician and known motorcycle nut, Hugh Laurie returns as television's most gifted but difficult doctor in the fifth season of House to torment fellows, save patients and perhaps fin [ ... ]


ANIMATION ASIA CONFERENCE 2009
01 Sep 2009

It’s time for South East Asia’s BIGGEST event celebrating all things related to Japanese animation and popular culture. The organizers of Anime Festival Asia 2009 (AFA09) are excited to [ ... ]


More features

Movie Reviews

Michael Clayton
Joe Bodia

Michael Clayton (check out the Widescreen Edition) is an in-house "fixer" at one of the largest corporate law firms in New York. At the behest of the firm's co-founder Marty B [ ... ]


Muallaf (The Convert)
Sivarai Pragasm and Richelle Gan

 Critically acclaimed Malaysian Film maker Yasmin Ahmad's latest offering, Muallaf (The Convert) takes a different approach from her previous films that were autobiographical in nature, and explore [ ... ]


More movie reviews


The latest feeds from other member sites of the Think Media network:

Thinky Approved Sites

Future Movies

Movies Found Online