Comments on: Pearl Harbor (Vintage Edition)

By: sdavmor

sdavmor — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 20:23:40 +0000

A round of applause for geKKo. What a find this “vintage” edit is! “Pearl Harbor” has always been one of those good-story-buried-somewhere-in-there films, and this effort by geKKo finds a way to get to one version of that good flick. There’s only really two ways to save the bloated cartoonish “Pearl Harbor” from it’s excesses. One is the “Strength and Honor” approach — make it a streamlined action-packed comrades-in-arms war-story heavy on caffeine and light on sugar. The other is to dive headfirst into embracing the goofy implausible love-triangle while trimming away a lot of blowing-shit-up for the sake of entertaining our modern adrenaline-junkie culture. Both paths acknowledge that in attempting to be both kinds of story the theatrical release of “Pearl Harbor” was unsatisfying as either. In this case geKKo’s stepping into a time-machine and going full-bore classic Hollywood wartime romance produces a movie that works well in ways I didn’t expect. It’s shameless cornball romanticism may still turn-off a lot of viewers, but without it this telling of the tale has no legs. By recasting the film as vintage B&W the cloying syrup seems far more appropriate for 1940-42, and makes this a wonderful throwback-to-yesteryear romance-flick for a rainy afternoon by a fire. In fact, as has been mentioned elsewhere, the vintage edition of “Pearl Harbor” bears a strong tonal resemblance to “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo”, which is a appropriate since that film is one of the defining pieces of overacted romance+heroism melodrama Hollywood produced during WWII. Well done geKKo. I look forward to watching your other B&W vintage fanedits.

By: Icarus

Icarus — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 16:28:07 +0000

Well done ! I think you really succeed in change this movie in a vintage way. The black & white helps, of course. But the rythm, the depiction of heroism, the romance look like what we found in old Hollywood movies made during the WW2 (30 seconds over Tokyo, for example). Patriotism dimension in the original movie was a demagogy but in your edit it seems more respectable and humble at the hands of History and people who endured this war. I’m very happy the final voiceover is cut. It was a simplistic History lesson, seen in “60 years after” perspective.
I very enjoyed your storytelling. It describes the essential, it is more centralized on the main (fictionnal) characters with some scenes showing historical facts wich give a context. The Japanese attack’s segment is excellent. We perceive horror, american stupefaction without artificial solemnity . You have removed what transformed it in a too much long action-packed sequence.

I always find so bad the Michael Bay’s film. Relatively, you modified this in honest one.

By: r8s8fr8

r8s8fr8 — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:45:01 +0000

Worked really well in black and white. It seems to be another overlooked gem.

By: geKKo

geKKo — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 17:39:27 +0000

thanks for your comments. if you liked this, be sure to check out the vintage editions for king kong and cinderella man.

By: wyatt0502

wyatt0502 — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 23:05:16 +0000

A very well put together edit of pearl harbor.

very well done.

Only part I did not like was that you did not get to see danny coming out of the plane once he had died.

all in all it was a very very good re-edit of the film

good going gekko (please do more of this thing)

By: geKKo

geKKo — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 17:38:58 +0000

FYI, I did not author the DVD.