Midway

Midway is not just the name of the place where a historic WWII sea battle took place between the Americans and the Japanese, it's also the point in this film where I realised I didn't know what was going on. Director Roland Emmerich (Godzilla, Independence Day, 2012) is obviously no slouch when it comes to action scenes, bringing us some truly astonishing battle sequences that provide much bang for your buck, but he struggles to tell his complex historical story with any coherence.

As the movie cuts back and forth between the American and Japanese forces, with numerous ships, locations, characters, and much detailed wartime strategy to take in, it's easy to lose track of what's what and, more importantly, who is who, making it hard to feel anything when they meet their inevitable fate in a ball of flames and twisted metal (the most emotional part of the whole film comes right at the end when photos with captions show the real-life people who were instrumental in the battle).

Of course, those who are watching, not for a history lesson or for heart-rending pathos, but for thrilling scenes of destruction and derring-do, are more than catered for with countless huge explosions, plenty of machine-gun fire and loads of impressive aerial combat. While most of this is realised through the use of CGI, it's well-handled and, for the most part, very convincing.

5.5/10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

Abundant, not-quite-realistic computer-generated images make Midway look more like a video game than a depiction of real-life events. The overuse of subpar effects is the most dominant - but hardly the only - problem dogging this film. Epic war stories are difficult to tell without focusing on a few characters. This film unsuccessfully juggles too many plot threads and too many characters to keep an emotional anchor to the simulated events unfolding. Woody Harrelson is outstanding, but other cast members cannot overcome the limitations of the material and the challenges of acting on computer-generated sets.

Especially when it comes to Ed Skrein's lines, the writing of this script was so bad. Attempts at drama come off as embarrassing. Also for some reason I just don't like Ed Skrein in this role. This movie could have been good, but it just had me shaking my head the whole time.

While I know a lot of reviewers liked the 1976 version of "Midway", for someone who knows about aircraft, it's a frustrating film. Again and again and again, the film uses old footage...much of which show planes which never fought at this famous sea battle! And, in a few cases, you'd see fighter planes turn into dive bombers and the like....all due to sloppy editing and a 'it's good enough' attitude. Because of this, I strongly recommend you see the 2019 version, which gets around this issue by using CGI...and modern CGI is incredible and looks real. Well made, but not perfect, but a very good film for folks who are interested in war films and history.

By the way, I wrote a review for this a few months ago and it never appeared on this site. It was much more detailed...but I just haven't seen it recently enough to review it more in depth.

Critics are trashing this film, I went into it skeptical. After, I'm not so sure why. They tell a simplified story of the events leading up to, and eventually the battle of midway. You get to see two sides of life, the Japanese and the American forces. The script is fine, acting is pretty good in my opinion as well (shout out to Dennis Quaid, he is a great salty kinda guy). CGI was not that bad, especially for fast paced scenes. Only complaint is it is a bit long, which I understand due to how much they wanted to include. But there were 2-3 times I thought it might end, but there were still a few minutes left. In the end, a solid war movie that, in my opinion, does a great job showing some brutality of war, in addition to brothership and slice of life of the time. A solid film to honor the brave men and women that died for a better future.