opinion The plot of the movie Pearl Harbor, now playing, is supposed to be based on history; it doesn't matter whether it is the American or the Japanese version. The actual plot that audiences are interested in, however, seems to have been plagiarised straight from one of our lovable Hindi movies.

Two boys, boy A and B, both best of friends, boy A meets girl, boy A goes away, girls thinks boy A died, girl falls for boy B and did it, and then boy A comes back alive. That part of the plot is supposed to be a side dish to the dominant plot - the Japanese attack on the US naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii during World War II.

Unlike most Hollywood wartime movies however, this movie loses its intended sting the moment it is shown to a non-American audience. At least some of the other wartime movies do not insult viewers with such blatant propaganda even if the villains were the Germans.

Pearl Harbor's directors might have thought emotions will be evoked or even tears shed if scenes of sufferings and war casualties are highlighted. That miserably failed. It was difficult even to feel the remotest sympathy when watching American vessels being `mercilessly' bombed by the Japanese pilots.

Pathetic

Yankee propaganda aside, one would have thought that some new facts or knowledge can be gained by watching a movie like this. But no. Viewers went home without knowing how the Japanese military commanders actually arrived at the conclusion that attacking Pearl Harbor was important, what sort of man President Roosevelt was, or how decisions were made by the United States to commits itself to fight side by side with Britain.

Instead, the insult to intelligence came when the paralysed from the waist down, wheelchair-bound Roosevelt in the movie, after being told by his military commanders that it was impossible to retaliate against Japan, struggled to stand up to show that `it is possible'.

The American military commanders, terribly moved by the sight of their President performing a miracle, rejoice and declare joyously that an immediate attack on Tokyo could be done. This scene, at best, can only be described as pathetic.

In the meantime, our younger audience went home without ever knowing that the United States did not win the war with Japan, only that they succeeded in killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese in Nagasaki and Hiroshima (and generations after them), and that is how it all ended.

Instead, at the end of the movie, a narrator uttered some nonsense about American bravery and how America `grew stronger' after the war.

Coffin

The truth is that Pearl Harbor was designed by Hollywood to be yet another movie to prop up the national pride of the Americans. Except for the sound of bombs echoing in our ears, this movie is not going to leave any mark on the audience.

The plot is stale, the propaganda too blatant. The only thing you don't want to miss in the movie is how the love story ended.

So here it is: Boy A and B go away for duty, boy A comes back, but boy B in a coffin. Boy A reunites with girl, and they lived happily ever after - but not before girl gives birth to boy B's bastard child!

ABDUL RAHMAN KOYA is the former English editor of the PAS organ, Harakah.