Pearl Harbor

Yes, the handful of battle scenes that make up a good hour of Pearl Harbor are adrenaline-pumping and hyper-realistic on a massive scale: you feel the impact of every single round from dive-bombing Japanese Zeros as they rip through pavement, planes and people in the infamous attack that forms the film's action centerpiece. But as impressive as these sequences are, they're just not worth suffering through the other two hours of the movie. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay (Armageddon, The Rock) never met a trite plot device they didn't like, so take away the Japanese attack and the last-act recreation of the retaliatory Doolittle raid, and all that's left is an uninvolving, 150-percent predictable (the characters slated to die practically have it stamped on their foreheads), totally paint-by-numbers cheap melodrama with a few good performances from Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale and Jon Voight (as President Roosevelt) propping it up from time to time. Still, given the sell-through price and popularity, this one's a no-brainer for purchase. (R. Blackwelder)