2001
I like period films. I like epics. I like drama and counter drama. I like seeing things blown up. I like seeing interesting characters put into extraordinary situations and seeing what they do. I like a good soundtrack and beautiful people.
Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsdale and the incomparable Mako as Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto create a tribute to, “A day that will live in infamy.” None of us young pups that watch the movie were actually there and I don’t think we can fully appreciate what it was like. Nor should we ever take it for granted that people live and die painful deaths so others can live free. A film like this, for me, is a potent glimpse at what it might have been like. A way of making the historical event more than a paragraph in a text book, but actually real people with faces and stories and dreams.
As a movie, I like it. Story is interesting and well written. Characters are compelling if not a bit predictable. The soundtrack is simple and uncluttered and still able to move you deeply. Special effects were great in the attack scene. And there’s a bunch of moments that could potentially make you cry.
One of my favorite, most moving moments was the part during the attack where Beckinsdale’s character is standing in the middle of the hospital. One of the other nurses says, “I don’t know what to do!” and there’s this circle pan shot around Beckinsdale showing all the wounded filling every corner of the room, all in a blur. Her face is smeared in blood and her expression perfectly captures “overwhelmed and helpless.”
War is never a good thing and probably never done from pure motives. But let us who have never been in war remember to be gracious to those who have.
Caedmon Augusto 