The story behind Pearl Harbor, written by Braveheart scribe Randall Wallace, tells the story of two best friends from Tennessee, Rafe McCawley (Ben Affleck) and Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett). We are first introduced to the two in the opening scenes set in the 1920s as young children who dream of becoming pilots. We then jump ahead to 1940, where Rafe and Danny are in the Armed Forces, serving under the legendary James H Doolittle (Alec Baldwin).

McCawley's slick flying skills have landed him an opportunity to volunteer for service in the Royal Air Force (this was of course prior to the United States' entry into WWII). Rafe leaves not only his best friend behind, but also an attractive nurse named Evelyn Johnson (Kate Beckinsale), whom McCawley has met and fallen in love with.

Rafe heads to England, while Danny and Evelyn wind up stationed over at - you guessed it - Pearl Harbor. The film jumps from England to Hawaii to Japan, where we see the Japanese scrupulously planning to attack the Pacific Fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor, as well as Washington DC, where the government seems to be brushing off the possibility of an attack by the Japanese.

In 1941, months after it is reported that Rafe has been killed during an air battle near the coast of France, Danny and Evelyn begin to grow closer and decide to consummate a relationship. Of course, Rafe is not dead but quite alive and well and returns to Pearl Harbor just as things between Evelyn and Danny begin to get serious. Being that this is 6 December 1941, the trio really won't have much time to worry about their triangle just yet. The "day of infamy" commences on 7 December, and the three are caught right in the middle of everything: Evelyn and her team of nurses desperately try to help the overwhelming numbers of wounded, while Danny and Rafe put their differences aside to help their fellow servicemen battle the surprise enemy presence. Without a moment's rest following the raid, McCawley and Walker are enlisted by Doolittle to fly in the 18 April 1942 Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, which many of the pilots perceive as a suicide mission.

Bay tries to take Titanic's doomed young love story, Saving Private Ryan's gritty realism and Top Gun's flyboy antics, mix it together and make it his own. There is only one problem: Michael Bay has little to none of the talent of either Steven Spielberg or James Cameron (Tony Scott he's on par with). Titanic had dialogue equally as corny as Randall Wallace's rancid wordfest here (which caused unintentional laughter here and there at the screening I attended), but at least Cameron allowed his leads to get into their roles and develop them to the point that we bought into them. Bay does not. Accompanied by Hans Zimmer's overbearing music score (which bears more than a passing resemblance to his Gladiator offering) and a camera that never stays still (another horrid Bay trademark), he races through each and every scene like a person on speed. Had he let a single scene go on for more than ten seconds, there might have been a chance for us to connect.

On the action front, he attempts to mine Ryan's gritty realism and here, he is slightly more successful. The attack on Pearl Harbor is a visual triumph, featuring images that Bay, cinematographer John Schwartzman and the folks at Industrial Light and Magic can rightly consider impressive, haunting and award-worthy. Yet even here, we feel detached from the horror simply because we never connect with the characters. Unlike the horrific bookend battles of Ryan that put us smack dab in the middle (and allowed us to feel the hell of battle), the attacks in Pearl Harbor keep us in the spectator stands for the whole event.

As for the cast, well, if you don't have a thing to work with in the script department, you can't really take all the blame. Affleck and Hartnett have the heroic good looks, but deliver less emotional oomph than those skeletal pygmies in The Mummy Returns. The same goes for Beckinsale, who looks great in 1940s clothing, but could easily have been replaced by a store mannequin and no one would have been the wiser.

Those that do survive the might of Michael Bay's editing juggernaut and Randall Wallace's galaxy of clichés to make a little bit of an impression are Jon Voight as President Roosevelt and Baldwin as Doolittle. In their short time on screen, they manage to escape with some of their screen credibility intact. Cuba Gooding, Jr. also does a decent job in his brief role as Doris "Dorie" Miller (and I do mean brief as in "blink and you miss him" brief), but it pretty much adds up to nothing more than a condensed version of his character from last year's Men Of Honor.

Take Titanic, add Saving Private Ryan and subtract all the great qualities of both of those films and you have Michael Bay's Attention Deficit Disorder epic Pearl Harbor. Long, loud, bloated and emotionally stillborn, this overhyped turkey from the folks that brought you the headache-inducing crapfest Armageddon does have one awesome attack sequence in it, but what you have to suffer in order to experience it is not worth your time or money.

Nothing is more disheartening to a movie lover than seeing trailers for a particular movie, having your cinematic breath taken away by what you see only to have your hopes crushed like a grape under a tire after you watch the final product. Sadly, this was the case with Pearl Harbor. Not the worst film of the year, but certainly the biggest disappointment so far. Then again, what did we expect for $135 million?

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