This megabudget production was widely panned by critics upon its release. Historians didn’t think too highly of it either, bristling at the artistic license it took in rearranging the chronology of events surrounding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as well as the movie’s simplistic, sappy nationalism. One World War II veteran whose actions were supposedly recast in the film described the whole work as “trash” and “oversensationalized and distorted.” TIME’s review yawned at the ponderous fictional relationships of Pearl Harbor‘s imagined protagonists — another gripe among the historical purists. As we wrote in our pages, “megahistory and personal history never integrate here.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8ZNYuvwhFE&feature=player_embedded]