Grade: B

Details: Starring Ben Affleck, Kate Beckinsale and Josh Hartnett. Rated PG-13 for sustained intense war sequences, images of the wounded, brief sensuality and some language. Three hours, 2 minutes.

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Review: Maybe it's not the knockout, edge-of-your-seat World War II flick that moviegoers expected, but Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay's “Pearl Harbor,” debuting Tuesday on VHS and as a two-disc DVD set, isn't as bad as many critics said.

The candy-colored, aw-shucks treatment of the movie's fictional flyboys (Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett) and eventual love triangle (with Kate Beckinsale) smacks of a glossy Wheaties cereal box cover. But once the Japanese drums start pounding and the planes start their bombing runs in the extended, hellish attack sequence, “Pearl Harbor” is an often riveting video game turned cinematic thrill ride. There's strong emotion in the rolling of the Oklahoma and a definitive wow factor in the explosion of the Arizona.

Like the movie itself, the accompanying “Making of . . .” documentary starts with bombast as Bruckheimer and Bay intone the importance and near impossibility of their task. But it settles down to offer interesting revelations about how the special effects team went about its business (for example, how a handful of surviving Japanese Zeros became a flying armada and how the moviemakers found and enlisted real ships). Not surprisingly, the bulk of the documentary focuses on the attack sequence.

— Bob Longino, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution