Pearl Harbor makes a splash

10 April 2012

Pearl Harbor, Disney's £100 million film of the 1941 Japanese bombing of the American fleet, was launched today with a giant premiere lavish enough to sink a battleship all by itself.

The initial verdict on the movie: love scenes that are riddled with cliché, but war action that's sensational.

To launch the £100 million big-screen extravaganza, a dazzling flotilla of more than 5,000 movie stars, Hollywood executives and top military brass, as well as survivors of the original attack, gathered today aboard the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS John C Stennis, which had sailed to the Hawaiian harbour especially for the party at a cost of £1 million.

Courtney Love, Cuba Gooding Jnr and model-actress James King were among the stars who made it through military checkpoints on to the red carpet swathing the deck of the carrier, which was moored close to the memorial for the seamen killed in the surprise attack.

A further £2 million was spent on fireworks, champagne, Hawaiian singers and a fly-by from vintage aircraft to give the movie a good send off. Pearl Harbor is expected to gross £50 million when it opens this weekend.

Unlike some of the guests, the movie's British star Kate Beckinsale didn't parachute onto the deck, but she far outshone co-stars Ben Affleck, Alec Baldwin and Josh Hartnett.

Utterly composed in a cream dress and on the arm of her boyfriend Michael Sheen, Miss Beckinsale, 27, said of her first blockbusting role and new celebrity status: "It really hasn't sunk in. I've always loved acting and I've loved my jobs. I guess I'll deal with it when it comes.''

Along with producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay, she was anxious to look beyond the canapés to mark the 60th anniversary of the attack.

"Meeting the survivors and seeing them at the memorial crystallised for us that these are real people's lives and we wanted to honour them as best as we could," she said.

Even as the premiere party was in full swing, retired serviceman Roland LaRochelle recalled watching as a bewildered teenager on a sunny morning as the first wave of Japanese bombers dived down.

"We shot down the first Japanese plane. You could see them just as plain as anything," he said. "The water was all in flames, so a lot of them were burnt to death right there in the water."

The movie itself, however, fails to reflect the myriad heartbreaking realities of that day. Director Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer apparently elected not to focus on the individual true stories from the attack, and commissioned Braveheart writer Randall Wallace to dream up an anti-climactic love triangle with two US pilots - Affleck and Hartnett - vying for the affections of the army nurse played by Miss Beckinsale.

Frankly, after all this the high-octane 40-minute bombing of the US naval fleet proves a welcome respite. And it is an impressive segment of the film, as educational as it is moving, though again the scenes of carnage are far from harrowing and there's not a swear word in earshot.

What has come to be called the "money shot" is a bird's eye view of one of the Japanese bombs plummeting towards the US flotilla, and this alone is worth anyone's price of admission.

There's another price to pay - a large dose of flag-waving jingoism. It's difficult to imagine any American, young or old, who won't lap it all up with hand quite genuinely on heart. International audiences may be unable to feign such enthusiasm.

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Pearl Harbor makes a splash

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