10 Incredible Action Scenes In Terrible Movies

Michael Bay strikes again this, time with his flaccid attempt to out-Titanic Titanic in his 2001 war epic Pearl Harbor. Clocking in at an excruciatingly overcooked 183 minutes, the late, great Roger Ebert might've put it best when he said of the movie:

"Pearl Harbor is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how, on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality."

And he's mostly right. The overwhelming bulk of Bay's film focuses on a toe-curlingly feckless love triangle between three characters you're barely encouraged to care about, set against the backdrop of a major piece of real-world history.

Viewers have to sit through 90 minutes of exhausting melodrama before the attack on Pearl Harbor finally happens, but when it does, it at least has the courtesy to be a damn doozy.

Even Bay's toughest detractors will struggle to write this technically bravura sequence off in its entirety - a staggering 30-minute pyrotechnics display combining incredible practical stunt work and gorgeous VFX carnage.

It's the only part of the movie that feels even remotely worthy of holding James Cameron's jockstrap, as soon enough we're back to business as tedious usual for the remaining hour.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was so thoroughly ripe for a splashy Hollywood treatment, but Bay suffocated the centerpiece amid a wealth of gooey, unconvincing romance.