Did you know that the U.S.S Nimitz is now America's oldest serving aircraft carrier. I didn't.
Anyways this Supercarrier stars in the movie alongside Martin Sheen and Kirk Douglas. The three of them go back to the past via a mysterious portal. They find themselves in a weird situation. They have an opportunity to stop (Attack on) Pearl Harbor and beat back the Japanese. Now the one ship on its own wouldn't be enough to defeat the entire Japanese Millatairy but in connection with the US Navy and a massive Fleet that wouldn't have been partly destroyed by the bombing runs, they most likely have to Japanese on the run in half the time.
I don't really mean it as a joke when I say that the Supercarrier is the star of the show. Yes all the major actors do a decent job and there is a story but at the end of the day this is a spectacle film. If you like looking at military technology, plane engagements, Landing procedures and the insides of ships then you'll be right at home with this film.
There's an especially entertaining bit in where some Modern American jets (Grumman F-14 Tomcat) are sent on an engagement against two Japanese zeros (Mitsubishi A6M) from 1941. And the whole procedure is quite the spectacle to watch.
As the actors go my favourite was Kirk Douglas. His commanding performance over the ship and his overall demeanour was really fun to watch. Also 'Charles Durning' character playing this 1940 Senator who apparently had a really Pro militaristic agenda when it came to US policies involving the Japanese. There's a lot of fun with him too.
So what's the movie with a time travel plot which means we're supposed to have a million glaring holes. The movie makes reference to some of these holes and even tries to explain a little bit of it.
But ultimately doesn't focus on it for too long. About halfway through the film you kind of forget about the whole Supernatural warp-hole and you just start focusing on the engagement of a modern military vessel against 40 year old equipment. Which ultimately never comes to True engagement as they pull out at the last second when the warp hole finally returns.
Now I have one issue with this time travel plot. They accidentally leave one of their seaman behind.
On a small Hawaiian island with this girl who was supposed to go to Pearl Harbour.
Because the Senator from earlier tried to hyjack the helicopter and get himself directly to Pearl Harbour and accidentally killing himself (and the crew) in the process. We find out at the end of the movie that the guy who hired Charlie Sheen's character to go on the boat in the first place was the guy who was accidentally left back in time.
I'm wondering what the heck did he do back then. When the Navy found him and the girl on that small Hawaiian island he would have had no identification linking him up to anybody at the time. There'd be no record of them on any military or government list. He's in military clothing and has probably bits of information if not supplies that links him to a future date. I would think the US military would see this as a massive red flag and most likely presume him as some sort of spy or weird deviant.
Maybe his soon-to-be girlfriend could convince them that he's just some random guy. Perhaps he could throw off most of his clothes and pretend that he was thrown out of a boat or a plane during the attack. Or they might have been found by a civilian vehicle and he could have gotten himself on the mainland and found some weird excuse to get himself registered into the army. Fake IDs and the like. It's not a glaring flaw it's not even that big a problem for the movie, it's just one of those nitpick things I like to think about some times.
No the real problem I have is in trying to explain both use of resources by the ship and the dead crew members that occurred during the warp. You could probably make an excuse that the resources used up by the Plains and the ammunition supplies we're all military exercises to show Martin Sheen's character what the ship's capability was. After all he was there to observe it's basic function. But then you still have the dead soldiers and that one dead Japanese guy. How are you going to explain that mess?
It's not a problem that affects the movie in any major way, it's just one of those weird scenarios that your brain starts to think about after you've watched the film.
But overall I think it's a fairly solid movie. And it's time travelling plot for the most part makes sense.
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