Also, this three-hour behemoth is rather poorly paced. It takes nearly half the movie just to get to the war, and it squanders many promising opportunities.

For one thing, the film has a colorful, interesting supporting cast but allows them to do very little — especially Cuba Gooding Jr., whose stint as real-life hero Dorie Miller is much too brief.

Frankly, the filmmakers could have gotten more screen time for Gooding and the others if they had just been smart enough to just use newsreel footage of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt instead of having Jon Voight play him (complete with a phony-looking chin appliance and a too-broad accent).

As for the three leads, they're appealing enough, though only Hartnett (who's beginning to resemble a young Tommy Lee Jones) has real chemistry with Beckinsale; Affleck shines more in the wartime scenes.

"Pearl Harbor" is rated PG-13 for wartime violence (including gunfire, brawling and explosive mayhem), scattered use of profanity and racial epithets, brief gore, brief partial male nudity and a brief, fairly discreet sex scene. Running time: 183 minutes.

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