Til sommeren er det 15 år siden kinopremieren på Pearl Harbor av Michael Bay, og regissørens nye film 13 Hours har norsk kinopremiere 5. februar. Den legendariske filmkritikeren Andrew Sarris, fant i sin tid mer å glede seg over i Pearl Harbor enn de fleste andre:

I dreaded what promised to be the three-hour ordeal of Pearl Harbor. But Pearl Harbor was not nearly so hard to take as I had anticipated. I even got a bit teary-eyed over its full-bodied romanticism and anachronistic nobility, which reminded me of a period I had experienced firsthand, though admittedly at the hyper-susceptible age of 13. […]

I am perhaps indulging a humanist bias on my part that is totally at odds with the tastes of today’s more gadgety and cyberspatially driven young people, who make up the target market audience for this new movie millennium. Nonetheless – and here is the ironic twist in my acceptance of Pearl Harbor – the parts I liked most are the parts before and after the digital destruction of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese carrier planes. […]

In the end, Pearl Harbor is not so much about World War II as it is about movies about World War II. And what’s wrong with that? […] The best way to see the movie is as I did: expecting nothing and being pleasantly surprised, and strangely moved, by Mr. Bay’s audacity in filming his lovers in end-of-the-world close-ups, however briefly. This is a choice I applaud, despite the risks it runs with reviewers.

– Andrew Sarris, 2001, New York Observer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxIsVYdB0lA