Director/producer Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer lavishly recreate the “date which will live in infamy” in the midst of a love story between childhood-buddy pilots and the nurse they both fall for in Pearl Harbor. Rafe McCawley (Ben Affleck of Armageddon) and Danny Walker (newcomer Josh Hartnett) grew up like brothers and dreamed of learning to fly. Both become pilots in the U.S. Army Air Corps, where they meet Evelyn Stewart (British actress Kate Beckinsale of The Last Days of Disco and Brokedown Palace), a beautiful nurse serving in the U.S. Navy. Rafe and Evelyn fall in love, but when Rafe joins Britain’s Royal Air Force, the lives of all three characters are forever changed.

The movie is beautifully shot and has an epic feel to it (especially given its 3 hour length). It is filled with patriotic imagery – which is perhaps even more poignant for someone living away from the U.S. – but it also does a good job of giving the Japanese a human side. However, while the story has a bit more substance than some of Bay’s earlier projects (Armageddon, The Rock, Bad Boys), it is still rather shallow and filled with clichés. The principal actors all do a good job with what they are given, but screenwriter Randall Wallace (The Man in the Iron Mask, Braveheart) doesn’t help them much. The movie has the same feel as some of Bruckheimer’s earlier productions (especially Crimson Tide and Top Gun), and is enjoyable to watch, but it doesn’t quite move beyond a popcorn movie. And with a historical event as important as Pearl Harbor, one would hope to give it more justice than that.