Sink 'Em And Weep?

If you can run out and buy an Oscar these days, Jerry Bruckheimer just shelled out $145 million in a blatant effort to match Titanic as the year's disaster/romance/FX event of the year. For nearly three hours we get it all: catastrophe, a hanky-yanking love triangle, and enough fireworks to, well, light up Pearl Harbor. Oscar material? We didn't think Titanic was gonna make it, and, besides, the Japanese Army may be a tad more destructive than Hannibal Lecter.

Ben Affleck is a dashing young fighter-pilot who risks life and limb to fly the unfriendly skies of Britain at the outbreak of WWII. Kate Beckinsale falls in love with the guy and keeps the faith waiting him out at Pearl Harbor. So does boyhood pal Josh Hartnett, who commiserates with Kate until word comes that Ben is an MIA courtesy of the Luftwaffe. The two cry on each others' shoulders until they get other ideas, and soon a new romance blooms until Ben returns from the dead. Uh-oh.

One of the interesting subplots involves Cuba Gooding, a black man relegated to permanent KP on the carrier Arizona due to pre-WWII racial criteria. He fights his way to glory in on-deck prizefights until the Jap attack gives him his chance at military heroics. We also have Alec Baldwin, a middle-aged top gun who acts as guiding light to Ben and Josh until getting his last shot at glory in Doolittle's retaliatory attack on the Nips. Yep, there's enough going on to turn this into a mini-series, though we hope TV producers don't take the idea seriously.

The piece de resistance is the attack itself, which Bruckheimer made as realistic as possible by having real-life Harbor vets on-hand to vouch for its authenticity. We get plenty of Titanica with drowning men, sinking ships and rushing water, while the Star Wars flight-and-fight scenes are a thrill to behold. Ben and Josh do a great Luke and Han act, and the whole theatre's waving flags and squirting tears as our boys jump on Doolittle's team for payback time at Tokyo in the final reel.

If anything, this works wonders in giving this country a big booster shot of patriotism after Election 2000, tax woes and big business schemes get us down in the dumps about old Uncle Sam. Hell, I'd forgotten all about Doolittle, so this is also a great educational tool for all those Xers out there who never learned much about what made this country great.