Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film one and a half stars, writing: ""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. The film has been directed without grace, vision, or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialogue, it will not be because you admire them." Ebert also criticized the liberties the film took with historical facts: "There is no sense of history, strategy or context; according to this movie, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because America cut off its oil supply, and they were down to an 18-month reserve. Would going to war restore the fuel sources? Did they perhaps also have imperialist designs? Movie doesn't say." In his later "Great Movies" essay on "Lawrence of Arabia", Ebert likewise wrote, "What you realize watching "Lawrence of Arabia" is that the word 'epic' refers not to the cost or the elaborate production, but to the size of the ideas and vision. Werner Herzog's "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" didn't cost as much as the catering in "Pearl Harbor", but it is an epic, and "Pearl Harbor" is not."