Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars
Bottom Line: Effects give it one more star than it otherwise would have. Best thing about it is that it ended.
“Midway” feels like one of those labor of love projects that started out as a decent concept and quickly devolved into the realization that, aside from the bravery and spectacle of a decisive battle, there really isn’t much of a story to tell. The movie features some pretty big name actors in supporting roles like Woody Harrelson as Admiral Nimitz and Dennis Quaid as Admiral Halsey and Aaron Eckhart as Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle and they pomp their way through the movie just fine but there is very little circumstance produced from their involvement.
The movie tries to weave a story around Dick Best (Ed Skrein) and Wade McClusky (Luke Evans) and abuses just about every war cliche in order to do so. Most egregious of the cliches is the “women suffering silently at home” cliche. We are treated to pointless scene after pointless scene of wives lamenting their position and fretting about their husbands and not much else. There is one scene that seems shoehorned in just to counter this cliche where Ann Best (Mandy Moore) lambasts Dick Best’s commanding officer about not promoting Dick, which was actually pretty fun if also useless. And that’s the biggest problem with true to life war movies; most people involved are just as ordinary and just as boring as everyone else in the world and they were just thrown into extraordinary circumstances and accomplished doubly extraordinary feats while still being their ordinary and boring selves.
As has been the norm in recent movies about older wars, this is not a rah rah go USA movie. The movie rightly pays homage to the Japanese and their commanders as believing they were just as right and as honorable as we thought we were. It also does a pretty decent job (as far as I can tell being a middle aged white male who thinks he knows everything) portraying Japanese hierarchical society. I really like this trend in movies and wish it would extend to movies about more recent “wars” like the “war” on “terror”.
The only good news is that the visual and audio effects for the movie are pretty darned good. I cannot imagine a movie this bad being nominated for anything even if it does one thing good, but you can probably expect the movie to be nominated for participation trophies like best visual and best sound. And yes, I know that stuff is mad difficult and requires months and months of hard work and deserves to be recognized when it’s done right, but I still wish the winners would be actual good movies.
Despite my mild praise for certain aspects of the movie, feel free to give “Midway” a wide berth. Ha! Watching the movie was worth it just so I could use that idiom. You’re welcome.