If Pearl Harbor feels like a recruitment film for a war that would happen about five months later in Afghanistan, thatвЂ™s not entirely by accident. In Bay and producer Jerry BruckheimerвЂ™s blockbusterization of mass tragedy, war is not hell but an absolute blast, with hot nurses, picturesque locales and aerial heroics so astounding that the president himself will pin a medal on your lapel. There are plenty of occasions to point and laugh at one clunky romantic exchange or another (вЂњYou are so beautiful it hurts.вЂќ вЂњItвЂ™s your nose that hurts.вЂќ вЂњNo, itвЂ™s my heart.вЂќ), but itвЂ™s this flattening of human experience that defines the film, which folds a Texas grade-school understanding of history into an Epcot theme park attraction. This despite the fact that itвЂ™s Danny who sneaks her on to an airplane to see Pearl Harbor at sunset. Whatever particular qualities might separate these two humans are rendered so irrelevant, in fact, that Evelyn tells Rafe that sheвЂ™ll never look at another sunset without thinking of him. Maybe she shares more interests with one than the other, or maybe there are differences in values or politics or preferred pizza toppings. (In fact, she doesnвЂ™t have a choice!) Maybe one is a better lover and the other more emotionally generous.

It doesnвЂ™t matter whether Evelyn spends the rest of her life with one or the other. But the truly damning detail вЂ“ one that extends beyond the love triangle and into every other aspect of the film вЂ“ is that Rafe and Danny are interchangeable. The banality of the plotting here, courtesy of the Braveheart screenwriter, Randall Wallace, is self-evident and noted in nearly every review of Pearl Harbor, which opened, as all Bay films do, to poor notices and robust box office. And so it goes: Rafe and Evelyn raise the boy. He doesnвЂ™t learn until heвЂ™s shot by Japanese soldiers, at which time he uses his dying breath to tell Rafe that he will now be the childвЂ™s father. Evelyn tells Rafe that sheвЂ™s pregnant with DannyвЂ™s child and intends to stay with Danny, which Rafe accepts. In the days after the attack, Danny and Rafe are assigned to what turns out to be a top-secret, near-suicidal retaliatory mission over Japan. Gives them all something else to think about. Resurfacing mere days before the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, he learns, after his months-long ordeal in occupied France, that his best friend and the love of his life have turned the page after an (extremely abbreviated) mourning period. They have sex in a parachute hangar.Д«ut wait! Rafe is alive. Danny offers Evelyn a shoulder to cry on. Danny and Evelyn, both now stationed in a sleepy little naval paradise called Pearl Harbor, are devastated by the news.

His plane gets shot down in the Atlantic and he is presumed dead.

Rafe wants to save that for when he gets back. Unbeknown to either Evelyn or Danny, Rafe has volunteered for the Eagle Squadron, an RAF outfit for Americans to help the British fight the Nazis. They enjoy what Evelyn describes as вЂњthe most romantic four weeks and two days of my lifeвЂќ. Rafe and Evelyn fall in love in early 1941, before America has entered the second world war.

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