Let me just get this out of the way: Michael Bay is the worst mainstream director working in Hollywood today. Admittedly, some of his films have been mildly entertaining, but I assure you that it had nothing to do with the direction and everything to do with the actors involved (The Rock comes to mind).

Bay's directing and editing choices on Armageddon created a film that was only a couple of edits shy of being a slide show. Since that movie was overly long to begin with, I wasn't looking forward to that same style being used on something clocking in at just over three hours. Although Bay has reigned his quick cuts in slightly -- but only slightly -- for Pearl Harbor, the film still looks more like a music video than it does a feature film. And a music video is certainly not the tone one should strive for when tackling subject matter as serious as the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Fast editing itself isn't always a bad thing, but Bay's quick cuts seem to exist to hide the fact that there isn't a shred of originality or creativity to the way he sets up his shots and tells his stories. When you combine that with a script that is as bad as it is long, you're set for a wasted three hours of your life.

I'm fairly certain that this film was not intended as a comedy, and yet I haven't laughed as hard at a movie in quite a while. Every line of dialogue is performed (poorly, I might add, but I'll get to the acting in a bit) as though it were the most profound thing ever said. The trouble is that there is nothing profound about this movie. I thought Armageddon had some howlers, but this script makes that meteor flick sound like Shakespeare.

They say that a good actor can make you weep by just reading names out of the phone book. Perhaps that's yet another testament to how bad this script is. Some good and notable actors make appearances in Pearl Harbor, yet not a one of them turns in a performance above the level found in your average junior high school play. If anything, they seem to be as astonished at reading the horrible lines as we are at hearing them.

I think it's fairly safe to say that the lousy performances are Bay's fault. He is obviously far more concerned with picking out which filters will make his shots look the most like postcards than he is with anything resembling storytelling or acting. As long as his actors just stand there and look pretty, who cares what's coming out of their mouths?

Like other psuedo-historical films, such as Titanic and Saving Private Ryan, Pearl Harbor places fictional characters in the midst of real events. In this case, we follow two best friends, Rafe McCawley (Ben Afleck) and Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett) as they join the US Army Air Corp and eventually fall in love with the same woman (Kate Beckinsale). Oh, and at some point Pearl Harbor is attacked by the Japanese, but that event seems to take a back seat to the boring, contrived and trite love triangle.

Given that, to describe the film as being based on the events of December 7, 1941, would be a terrible disservice to history. Rather, this is the story of Pearl Harbor as told by someone who's only source of historical input comes from Hollywood and MTV. Facts seem to have been considered an optional ingredient -- they are included when convenient and cheerfully tossed out the rest of the time. Still, I could forgive some anachronisms or inaccuracies if the writing, acting and directing were strong enough to make up the difference. Instead, we are given a story that is an insult to the world regarding the attack on Pearl Harbor.

I won't fault anyone for liking this film, but if anyone out there thinks this is in some way an accurate representation of the Japanese attack, then they need to have their head examined -- or at the very least, switch off the TV and open up a history book. For one thing, the Japanese were motivated by far more than a fear of running out of oil, but you'd never know that from this script.

Now, if you're going to sit through a film mired in pure crap, then the film's remaining few bits of action better be sterling, right? Well, I can say that the action is best part of this film, and it's all truly spectacular, but extremely watered down. There were thousands of casualties at Pearl Harbor, yet this film shows very little of it. Even the hospital scenes are filtered through a blurry lens. It's as though Bay wanted to protect a precious PG-13 rating by sanitizing the war for us. I'm not saying that the film should have given us blood and guts strewn all over the screen, but if you're going to try to depict the horror of an event, then have the courage to show it without flinching away. Bay's interpretation of the attack manages to invest as much emotional impact in World War II as Microsoft's Combat Flight Simulator.