I saw this flick yesterday and found it terribly moving, and successful at representing facets of the time. The love thread was particularly tortuous and to my mind represented very well the kind of bizarre ricochets that get thrown at people in time of war even at the personal level, because of the wide-scale disruption. Sure some of the melodrama was over done -- FDR standing down his wussy cabinet by standing up. The Doolittle raid was well done and if I recall "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" was pretty accurate. All in all it was a fairly balanced movie, for a blockbuster, better released than not. Not historical, but convincing in a representative way.

Finally, no effort was made to hide the grim faces of war from the story. The drowning of the Arizona survivors after the raid by well-intended rescuers who opened a small hole in the hull which let their airbubble escape was a heart-wrencher. The duplicity of some bureaucrats and the stupidity of certain Admirals was well done. The precision of the raid planning was remarkable. I recommend it as good entertainment and think it is even informative in a rudimentary way.

Peter T., I submit that nations and empires cannot be judged on the time scale of your impatience. If you can find the records of the Proceeds of the Congeess of the United States, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Independence (4 July 1996) there is an essay there by one John Knox Jessup which ends "After two hundred years, it's too soon to quit!". This is a sentiment with which I concur, despite the temptations both internal and external not to bother. And if you really want to judge our culture by our mass media, I would be really careful about trusting you with a credit card.

Warm regards,

Amos