What will most likely be the biggest movie of the Summer, and possibly the whole year (especially since "Lord of the Rings" starts in December) is "Pearl Harbor". Brought to us by Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay, it's an extremely expensive and well done movie with stunning special effects and a good plot to go along with it. Contrary to what you may think by the name of the film, the actual attack comprises only about the middle third of the movie.

Much like "Titanic", this movie is really a love story set during a momentous event in history. Rafe McCawley (Ben Affleck) and Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett) have been friends since childhood. While they were kids they pretended to fly Rafe's dad's WWI biplane, dogfighting up in the clouds and shooting Germans out of the sky. Now they are new lieutenants in the US Army Air Corps. It's January, 1941 and they and their friends have a few days before they are sent to their assignments.

It's during this time that Rafe meets up again with Lt. Evelyn Johnson (Kate Beckinsale), a nurse in the US Navy. Actually, they met before when Rafe and Danny first joined up and went through their physicals. Rafe is dyslexic and would have failed the vision test if not for Evelyn's kindness. That was the start of a friendship that has slowly grown into real love.

But now Rafe has something to tell Evelyn. He's leaving for England, to join the Eagle Squadron, composed of Americans fighting for the British. And what about Danny? Well, Rafe has always tried to protect the younger man, so he told Danny that he'd been assigned to England rather than having volunteered. In any case, he doesn't want to take their relationship to the next level, so Evelyn will wait for Rafe to return.

Meanwhile, the Japanese High Command decides that if war is inevitable with America, then they must strike first. At the Pacific Fleet based in Pearl Harbor. As for Admiral Kimmel, in command of Pearl Harbor, he is once again incensed that he must give up another group of Destroyers which will be sold to England. ("What can we do?" muses President Roosevelt, "instead of warships we're building refridgerators, so we have to strip our defenses to help our British and Russian friends.")

Skip to about August of 1941. Danny and the rest of the crew find themselves in Hawaii, assigned to one of the Army Air Bases there. Evelyn and the other nurses are there too. Rafe and Evelyn write constantly to each other. But one day Danny formally visits Evelyn to tell her that Rafe has been killed in action.

She is distraught for months, as is Danny. But in their mutual sorrows, they find companionship that slowly grows into something more. And as the Japanese fleet gets ominously closer and closer, Danny and Evelyn fall in love. Just in time for Rafe to enter back into the picture. It seems that he was shot down in the English Channel, washed up in France, and was stuck there a few months until he could make his way back to England. But now he finds his best friend and his love together, and he doesn't know what to do. Not like that'll be a problem for much longer, for it's the night of December 6.

The actual attack takes about an hour of explosions and dying. Lots of action and quite grand, but not as graphic as "Saving Private Ryan", which has people being decapitated, cut in half, or blown up into itty bitty pieces. After the attack and its aftermath, there is the better part of an hour as we follow Rafe and Danny as they join and participate in Doolittle's Raid, and of course the resolution to their little love triangle with Evelyn.

It's a big movie with a lot of little plots, although none as fully developed as the main romance. Cuba Gooding Kr plays Doris Miller, the first black soldier to win the Navy Cross; Jon Voight plays President Franklin Roosevelt; Alec Baldwin is Major/Colonel James Doolittle; Tom Sizemore plays Earl, one of the Army Chief Mechanics; Dan Aykroyd plays Captain Thurman, Naval Intelligence (and here Bay and Bruckheimer don't subscribe to the "Roosevelt knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor and did nothing about it" theory).

All in all, a really good movie. Other than the obvious fictional characters and love story, the rest seems to be pretty authentic. This is not "Tora! Tora! Tora!", a war movie about the attack on Pearl Harbor. This is a love story set at a time when the attack on Pearl Harbor is an obvious focus.