We know that some Indians looked down on White settlers, but in general, whether in "Dances with Wolves" or "Little Big Man" or "Buffalo Bill and the Indians" Hollywood always does that angle very poorly. All their natural smugness comes out, and it's very unconvincing. I didn't get a feeling from any of these movies that we were watching real Indians, rather than PC cliches.
"Pearl Harbor" was like a big, stupid, hokey comic book. Except for the extreme length, I didn't mind it at all. Probably, I just remember Kate Beckinsale and the few good parts and have blessedly forgotten the long stretches in between.
"U-571" was derivative, historically untrue, and boring. The "Thin Blue Line" was exceptionally boring -- and not boring in a successfully artistic way like Mallick's earlier films, "Badlands" and "Days of Heaven."
Platoon: was that as bad as I remember? Ditto for Fonda's "Coming Home."
I wasn't too bad on this until they had the homing torpedoes. Hey it looked great in "Hunt for Red October", but.........the technology didn't exist. Movie makers always go wrong when they play the audience for suckers.
As a departure, when I saw "Gladiator" I thought the motivation of the one officer who refused his sword to Commodus at the end to be very odd; not supported by what had gone before. I now have the deluxe DVD set and his motivation for basically betraying the emperor was brought forth in a deleted scene. So movie makers have to cross a lot of "T"s and dot a lot of "i"s t make things work.
Walt