Pearl Harbor is exactly the movie you would expect director Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer to make.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, and in fact parts of this three-hour World War II epic are brilliant -- especially the 40-minute sequence in which the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor is stunningly re-created. But while it hits all the right visceral and emotional notes, it does so in the most risk-free way possible. Pearl Harbor's romantic drama, historical sweep and patriotic fervor all arrive in a tidy package tied up in a red, white and blue ribbon.

Before that 40 minutes of bravura filmmaking comes a romantic triangle that would be at home in a 1940s Hollywood melodrama. Best buddies Rafe McCawley (Ben Affleck) and Danny Walker (Josh Hartnett) are Army Air Corps flyboys who meet a Navy nurse, Evelyn Johnson (Kate Beckinsale). Evelyn is Rafe's girl, until he volunteers to fly combat missions in England while the U.S. sits out the war. When Rafe is shot down and presumed dead, Evelyn and Danny, both stationed at Pearl Harbor, grieve together -- and, after a suitable mourning period, start their own romance.

Then the not-so-dead Rafe returns, but sorting out the relationship will have to wait -- because the next morning, the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.

The attack is staged and visualized with all the technical expertise and emotional wallop that a $140 million budget can buy. From the bomb's-eye view of the USS Arizona's explosion to the smallest detail (like the naval hospital collecting blood donations in Coca-Cola bottles), Bay & Co. bring the wartime horrors of Pearl Harbor to life impressively.

Bay and screenwriter Randall Wallace (Braveheart) also score with other small moments, aided by some key supporting performances. Jon Voight gets Franklin Roosevelt's "date which will live in infamy" cadences down perfectly, even if he does have to strain for cheap theatrics by having the polio-stricken president rise from his wheelchair. The veteran actor Mako is graceful as the Japanese fleet commander, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto. Dan Aykroyd makes a salty Naval Intelligence officer, the one guy sounding ominous warnings about a Japanese air assault. And Alec Baldwin bookends the story smartly as Lt. Col. Jimmy Dolittle, leading the 1942 bombing raid on Tokyo that gives the movie an upbeat ending.

But Bay cannot resist the melodramatic cliches of World War II movies, the same ones that peppered his bombastic Armageddon: the ethnic grab-bag of Danny's fighter squadron, the heroes' Right Stuff march down the runway, or the Norman Rockwell imagery (like the kids' baseball game interrupted by Japanese planes).

Also problematic is the inclusion of a real-life figure in the attack, Doris "Dorie" Miller (played by Cuba Gooding Jr.), a mess-hall aide on the USS West Virginia who manned a gunnery station and shot down two Japanese planes -- and becoming one of the first African-Americans to receive commendations for military heroism. Miller's story, inspiring as it is on its own, feels artificially tacked onto the movie, added less for storytelling need than for demographic diversity. (And was the boxing match, a too-obvious homage to Frank Sinatra's role in that other Pearl Harbor movie, From Here to Eternity, really necessary?)

The central romance of Pearl Harbor is serviceable enough, and Affleck and Beckinsale really bring it home. But, as with the Jack/Rose connection in Titanic, the Rafe/Evelyn/Danny drama pales in comparison to the larger events going on around them. Humphrey Bogart was right -- the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans alongside the harrowing human toll of the war, or the amazing visual spectacle of Pearl Harbor.