Pearl Harbor (Rental) (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	War	Main Menu Audio & Animation THX Trailer THX Optimizer
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	175:36 (Case: 183)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (88:11)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Michael Bay
Studio Distributor	Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.	Starring	Ben Affleck Josh Hartnett Kate Beckinsale
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	Rental	Music	Hans Zimmer

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) Turkish Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired Turkish	Smoking	Yes, these are Americans, and it is the 40s
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes, ever heard of collecting blood in Coke bottles?
		Action In or After Credits	No

    What I saw pleasantly surprised me.

    Pearl Harbor tells the story of childhood friends, and born fly-boys, Rafe (Ben Affleck) and Danny (Josh Hartnett) who join the military to achieve their dream of being fighter pilots. On one of their postings, Rafe meets and falls in love with navy nurse Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale) just before he is offered the chance of achieving his dream - flying in a real war situation. He accepts the transfer to help the RAF in England fight the Germans, but keeps writing Evelyn letters. Unfortunately, Rafe takes on one German too many, and his plane plummets to the ocean. Word of his disappearance is relayed back to Danny who has the job of telling Evelyn. As can be imagined, both Danny and Evelyn take the news badly, and they are slowly pulled towards each other. But then, on December 6, Rafe turns up alive. Oops. As anyone who knows their wars will tell you, Pearl Harbor was attacked shortly after dawn on Sunday December 7, so fortunately, he is just in time to be there to hit back at the nasty Japs, and give them hell.

    The attack sequences are spectacular, and showcase some of the most impressive imagery that the CG masters at ILM have created to date. The explosions are authentic, and the feel of confusion and fear is apparent. Unfortunately, after the almost 50 minute attack sequence, there is still over an hour of conclusion that includes the wind-up of the love story that was so rudely interrupted by the Japanese, and a revenge attack on Tokyo.

    This is really two movies rolled into one. There is the romance that, whilst poorly written, is interesting enough thanks to the charisma of all of the actors involved, and then there is the action movie. The two really don't work well together, as the action sequence is too much for anyone who is there for the romance alone. As such, this film works quite well if you like action movies, but go into it expecting a romance movie. That way, the action will please, and the romance satisfy. Waiting for the action through the romance would be soporific if you were not getting into the story. The only thing that is unfortunate about the melding of the two forms is that the romance is cut off by the Japanese attack just when it is starting to get quite interesting. So what we end up with is a B-grade romance meshed with an A-grade actioner to produce a C-grade combination. It may have been simply that my expectations were so low coming in, or that I have always loved films that fall into the "so bad it's good" category, but I quite enjoyed Pearl Harbor. While not for everyone, this disc is worth a look at rental level for the action sequences alone.

Video

    Presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1, this transfer is 16x9 enhanced.

    This transfer displays a very good level of sharpness, being more than enough to make out fine detail without causing much in the way of aliasing. A somewhat surprising problem for such a high-profile film is the level of grain present in the transfer. Unfortunately, this appears to be an "artistic" choice, involving the utilization of high-grain film stock. The grain is particularly bad early on, but seems to reduce as the film progresses (although this could be more a case of becoming used to the image as presented). The worst case however, occurs as an isolated instance at 80:11 - and stands out all the more for the general reduction in grain by that point in the film. Shadow detail is very good, allowing night scenes to really come to life. There is no low level noise.

    Colours are very nicely rendered, allowing the '40s setting to come through with sumptuous glory.

    There are absolutely no MPEG or film artefacts present at all in this transfer, which is extremely pleasing. There are, however, a few instances of aliasing. Most are extremely minor, and would be missed unless specifically looked for, however the horizontal lines on the briefing room blackboard at 142:52-143:06 seem to possess a life of their own, displaying enough shimmering to make them extremely distracting.

    The English subtitles I sampled stuck almost word-for-word to the dialogue, which is generally not that hard given the slow-talking Southern accents affected by the two lead men. The subtitles are rendered in a very clean, easy-to-read typeface that is quite attractive. It is another matter where the subtitles for the Japanese dialogue are concerned. These subtitles are very small, tend to move quite quickly, are placed over the image instead of in the blank area afforded by the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, and are not that easy to read.

    This is an RSDL formatted disc, with the layer change taking place at 88:11, shortly after the Japanese attack has begun. While it is placed during a lull in the action, it is still mid-scene and therefore somewhat distracting. There were many more appropriate positions where it could have been placed.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are two audio tracks available on this disc, being the original English dialogue and a Turkish dub. Both tracks are presented in Dolby Digital 5.1, encoded at the normal bitrate of 384 Kbps, with the English audio track additionally having the THX Surround EX flag enabled despite not actually being an EX encoded track.

    A note to make here is that the embedded THX Surround EX flag may cause some problems for some EX enabled Dolby Digital processors, causing them to turn EX processing off between 141:41-143:02, along with a concomitant momentary audio drop-out. This problem is, fortunately, quite easily overcome by forcing an EX enabled processor into either 6.1 or 5.1 mode - the flag will only be a problem if the surround processor is set to automatically detect EX tracks. This problem, therefore, will obviously not affect those with straight 5.1 setups, nor those with 6.1 non-THX processors. This is not apparently the fault of the soundtrack per se, but an issue that has arisen as a result of changes to the specifications of embedded EX flags and the resultant confusion this engenders in some EX processors.

    I listened to the English dialogue track.

    Dialogue is clear and easy to understand at all times, even during action sequences.

    There are no problems with audio sync in this transfer.

    The score for Pearl Harbor is provided by Oscar winning composer Hans Zimmer, and perfectly suits the on-screen action at the same time as being very good in its own right.

    The surround channels are very actively used throughout the movie and really come to life during the impressive action sequences. During most scenes they are used to support the score or ambient sound, but when the action sequences kick into life, the advantage of discrete surround channels really becomes evident.

    The subwoofer is used as aggressively as the surround channels where necessary, backing up the explosions, engines, bullet impacts and virtually every other imaginable source of low frequency sound very impressively indeed.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

• English DTS 5.1 soundtrack
• English Dolby Headphone 2.0 soundtrack
• French Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack
• Featurette: "Journey to the Screen: The Making of Pearl Harbor"
• Featurette: "The Unsung Heroes of Pearl Harbor"
• Theatrical and Teaser Trailers
• Faith Hill music video
• National Geographic documentary trailer
• DVD-ROM features

• Turkish Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack
• Single disc edition (no changing discs during the movie)

    The video is of a very high quality, let down only by some of the "artistic" choices made for the source material resulting in overly high levels of film grain.

    The audio quality is exceptional, presenting an almost perfect soundtrack.

    There are absolutely no extras included in this release.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall