There is really no point in reviewing Pearl Harbor — as one American columnist put it, if critics mattered, that movie would never have been shown. Let me add that if the audience could tell a good movie about Pearl Harbor from a bad movie about Pearl Harbor, they would’ve rented From Here to Eternity. Pearl Harbor may even be seen as a lobotomized version of the 1953 classic, with Ben Affleck as the Burt Lancaster character without the masculinity, Kate Beckinsale as the Deborah Kerr character without the passion, Josh Hartnett as the loner Montgomery Clift character without the intensity, and Cuba Gooding, Jr. as the scrappy Frank Sinatra character, without the electricity. Which makes Pearl Harbor the emblematic movie for the age of mediocrity. Ten minutes into the flick, as Affleck and Hartnett showed off in their big, fast airplanes, I sensed the presence of another person. Someone who isn’t even in the movie. That person is Matt Damon.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are the two-headed hydra of Hollywood. The story of the best friends who met as kids in a Boston school, became struggling actors together, and at the lowest point in their showbiz careers collaborated on a screenplay which not only became the hit movie Good Will Hunting, but also earned them matching Oscars, is one of the most popular movie myths. Early in their careers the two had autonomous identities. They both had supporting roles in School Ties, although Damon had the bigger part as the evil preppie who torments Brendan Fraser. Affleck, the taller, squarer-jawed, extroverted one, had roles in Going All The Way, Dazed and Confused, and Mall Rats. Damon the shorter, softer, introverted one, co-starred in Geronimo: An American Legend and Courage Under Fire. Shortly before their Oscar sensation, Affleck gave the best performance of his career in Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy. In it he plays a comic book artist who falls in love with a strange girl, to the disapproval of his best friend (Jason Lee). (Damon had a cameo as a TV producer.) Meanwhile, Damon landed the lead in the Francis Ford Coppola adaptation of John Grisham novel, The Rainmaker. Then Good Will Hunting opened, and the two were fused into a single, celebrated entity: Ben-Matt, or Matt-Ben.
Although the pair does not always work together, they are commonly perceived as one unit. They are partners in a production company, they double-dated other young Hollywood royalty (Gwyneth Paltrow and Winona Ryder), they were gypped by the same financial adviser, and they co-organized a competition for promising screenwriters. They also co-starred in Kevin Smith’s Dogma. Affleck and Damon are regarded as glamour twins, clean-cut, All-American, and seemingly joined at the hip.
Their individual projects have met varying levels of success. Ben Affleck played the romantic lead in Forces of Nature opposite Sandra Bullock, and Bounce opposite Gwyneth Paltrow, but audiences did not seem to accept him in those roles. He starred in an action movie, Reindeer Games co-starring Charlize Theron, but it didn’t click with audiences, either. Affleck then took on a supporting part in Shakespeare in Love. The film starred his girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow, but she was not his love interest. Affleck solo, minus Damon, seemed incomplete; even when he was paired with a leading lady, there was something missing.
Meanwhile, Matt Damon starred in Rounders, Saving Private Ryan, and The Talented Mr. Ripley. They were not blockbusters (except for Ryan), but they were “prestige” projects with respected directors.
It is interesting to note that in each of these movies, Damon was cast with another young actor who represented his opposite. In Rounders he was the sane best friend to the troublesome gambling addict Edward Norton. In Saving Private Ryan he was the obedient soldier, as opposed to the borderline mutinous Edward Burns. And in the adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley , Damon was the sociopath in pursuit of Dickie Greenleaf, portrayed by Jude Law. In these movies, Damon gave convincing performances. Damon solo seemed complete even without Affleck, because he had an Affleck substitute. Norton, Burns, and Law essayed the Affleck character, that is, the taller, squarer-jawed, more extroverted half of the duo.
Ben Affleck scored a hit with Armageddon, in which he played the headstrong, youthful mirror image of oil driller Bruce Willis. He was no longer missing his other half; he had solved the equation. Affleck and Damon are two halves of a whole, two sides of a duality. They complete each other.
When one is missing, it creates a void which must be filled by a substitute. Matt Damon’s recent films The Legend of Bagger Vance and All the Pretty Horses follow the equation, with Will Smith in the golf movie and Henry Thomas in the western. In Pearl Harbor we see the most commercially-viable application of the Ben + Matt equation. In it, Josh Hartnett provides the softer, more introspective aspect of the duality. Too bad the movie is garbage.