Played by Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale, the characters in Pearl Harbor are completely fictional and written to create a commercially viable vehicle for the filmmakers. The proverbial love triangle is certainly soapy enough, predictable and efficiently enacted. For me, however, the best part of this film is the actual day of infamy, the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

If you go to IMDB.com and check out the reviews, you won’t want to watch this movie. I was surprised at the outrage, the vehemence with which these viewers expressed their opinions of this film. They hate it! Historically inaccurate, Sappy, too long, Views like a video game. Fighter pilots cannot become bomber pilots. No Army nurses died in real life. Okay, gimme a break!

The success of any film or book is its ability to allow the viewer/reader to suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy it. If you are going to sit there with a damn history book in your lap, forget it. I concur that it’s lengthy, and traverses a long period of time. But I feel the storytellers and filmmakers had a tale to tell. If one wants historical accuracy, go rent a documentary on WWII. Check out Tora! Tora! Tora!.

And yes, Diamond Head Lighthouse is in the film, and was an original star in the original, real-life day the Japanese attacked Pearl. I’ve been there, sneaked around on the cliff adjacent to the lighthouse(it’s actually built on the side of an extinct volcano!) trying to get this photo. Almost fell. Was worth it, of course!

Maybe the reason I like the film so much is that it brought to life an event I knew so little about. I think I was absent that day/week/month in school when we studied about this horrific event. Yeah, so, maybe it’s not nitpickingly accurate. But I believe it captures the terror, the feel of that horrible day in American history.