Midway

Rating:
Summary: How to ruin a movie with by sloppy editing
Review: The overall presentation of the Midway campaign is accurate but this movie was made on the cheap and it shows. The plight of Heston's son and his Japanese American girlfriend shows a real problem that existed but is poorly integrated into the plot.

The real problem is the combat footage, almost all of which was stolen from elsewhere and stuck in with no sense of responsibility. First, don't use recognizable footage from one of the best WWII films made, Tora, Tora, Tora, especially using the very recognizable P40, an army plane not used at Midway, taking off against a mountainous background just after you've used a long shot showing that Midway was a flat atoll. Second, pay attention to what you just showed -- do not show a single seat fighter crashing just after you've shown the interior of a three seat plane getting shot up. Don't mix dive bombing (steep angle) and glide bombing (shallow angle)shots and do not!! show an extrior of the plane pulling out of a dive and then flip back to a studio shot showing the cockpit still pitched at a downward angle.

Finally, the Yorktown was not hit by a kamikaze so don't use the footage of the USS Franklin getting hit late in the war.

You don't have to be the type of military buff who can tell the different versions of a plane by small details to notice this kind of corner cutting. Instead of competing with Tora Tora Tora, the makers of Pearl Harbor should have remade this one.

Rating:
Summary: Accurate, but...
Review: Insofar as "Midway" sticks to the actual history of the battles of Coral Sea and Midway, it's a pretty good film. The history is correct, the battles are depicted accurately and the sequence of events is laid out as it happened. The problem with Midway is that the makers apparantly didn't think the basic story was enough to hold viewers' interest, and so decided to wrap a love story between an Admiral's son and his Japanese-American girlfriend around it. Hello? Midway isn't interesting enough? The battle that turned the tide of the war in the Pacific and rewrote the book on naval strategy?

Nevertheless it's still worth watching. History buffs will enjoy how well the events are reconstructed and general viewers will enjoy the complex unfolding of events that make the story of Midway as gripping as any thriller.

Rating:
Summary: One of the Best
Review: This movie excels in the relem of wr movies. It truly is a classic!

Rating:
Summary: Best War Movie of All Time
Review: This and saving private ryan are two of my favorite war movies of all time. Midway tells the story of, you guessed it, the battle of Midway. This movie is more along the lines of an entertaining documentary than really a movie, yet it still great. I dont know, maybe because this is the most interesting battle of the entire war in my opinion, but this is truly one of those movies you have to see if you enjoy war movies.

Rating:
Summary: Good theme, but way too "Hollywood"
Review: I won't take any more than one star away from this movie for all its faults, because in the end, it's still a very good and entertaining viewing experience. The 'Hollywood effect' is, however, unfortunately present. They do too much with the love story between the American fighter pilot and the Japanese girl, which is okay to draw the popular crowd audience, but for those people, the second half of the movie would seem pointless, even if that IS the important part. I'll also agree with the reviewers that said that the material sampling is WAY overdone. Obviously, the filmmakers had nowhere near the budget of "Tora Tora Tora," so a lot of scenes from that movie were thrown in, and there is a lot of actual combat footage. Now, nothing against the actual combat footage, but it does add a level of disparity to the film. There were quite a few airworthy F4Fs, TBMs and SBDs available at the time, so they could've done the scenes with the actual aircraft types and not had to contend with the level of visual differences.

The "English-speaking Japanese" feature is also a big Hollywood turnoff. However, it makes it easier for people who need reading glasses to read the subtitles! It does take away from the realism, though. The filmmakers did paint the portrait of the Japanese as good fighters and not savages, which I liked. But there were some questionable points when comparing this to "Tora Tora Tora." For example, in the latter film, the filmmakers led us to believe that the relationship between Adm. Nagumo and Cdr. Genda was less than warm and cozy, but in this film, they're like best buddies and have nothing but praise for each other's ideas and tactics. There are also some differences in Nagumo's character. In "Tora Tora Tora," he's portrayed as very cautious, not taking any risks that would endanger his fleet. This film does portray him as the fine commander that he was, but also seems to indicate that he was more bold and even somewhat reckless.

Overall, however, for all of its faults, "Midway" is a good film. Yes, it's more romanticized than "Tora Tora Tora" and was meant for a more mainstream audience, but it is still an adequately accurate depiction of one of the most important battles of WWII. In a sense, it's a shame that future filmmakers will never be able to make a film about an epic Naval battle again. Warfare has devolved into a more sanguine "civilized nation"-vs.-terrorist deal, with no honor, no heroes, and no sanctity for those fallen.

The verdict: Buy this film, but don't expect a picture that's all about the action. It's comparable in a way to the recent film "Pearl Harbor," except far more on-topic and much less concerned with wooing the audience. But it won't be one of those films where you'll think to yourself, "I want those two hours of my life back."

Rating:
Summary: awesome
Review: i have been trying to get a copy of this movie which i saw on vhs about 15 years back.this was an awesome naval battle picturised well here where the japs lost 5 of their carriers akagi, hiryu, soryu which were the flagship of the imperial navy and turned the tide of the war against the japs.this is a terrific movie and is highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: airplane cocktail
Review: The producers of Tora Tora Tora got dinged because their depiction of the Pearl Harbor attack was a box office flop. They must've decided it was because there was no love story. So, they took the standard Hollywood approach to Midway (kind of "Pearl Harbor"-Lite), and, because there were plenty of outtakes from Tora, they could slip a lot of aerial action in on the cheap. Cheaper still, what they didn't have from Tora, they made up, using archival stock footage of just about every navy aircraft that ever flew in WWII and a few that didn't (the producers must've figured "if that plane is painted blue we'll use it--nobody'll know the difference"). Now, Midway was in June, 1942, but the movie mixes and matches films from Tora with footage from '44, '45, Kamikazes (which didn't first appear until almost 2 and a half years after Midway) and even postwar. I was in my teens when I first saw this movie with all the sensurround; even back then I cringed at its cheesiness and groaned on seeing Okinawa-era Corsairs and Hellcats. If I had to describe this movie to someone who's never seen it in one sentence, it would be: "Charleton Heston starts rolling down the deck on his final mission in an F6F, becomes airborne in a TBF, flies toward the enemy carrier in a Vaught Vindicator, drops his bombs from BOTH an SBD and an SB2C (hmmm, musical dive bombers), and crashes in flaming glory back on his carrier in an F9F Panther." That says it all for me about this clunker--a real embarassment for any aviation or history buff.

Rating:
Summary: Not as great as "Tora, Tora, Tora"
Review: "Midway" does not excel as much as its predecessor on many points. For one, there's the unnecessary conflict, mostly in the love interest.

Also, the Japanese speak English, and I can't help but identify some voice actors dubbing over them (some Rankin/Bass regulars seem to help out, if you've watched things like "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"). It doesn't give it as real a feel as "Tora, Tora, Tora" did with the Japanese speaking their native language.

Finally, the movie "Midway" whores stock footage like no one's business. Every scene in "Tora, Tora, Tora" was re-enacted, but sadly that is not seen here. The stock footage sticks out from the regular movie like white string holding a toy spaceship.

Overall, its a decent war film if you're in the mood for one, but I wouldn't call it a classic.

Rating:
Summary: Dude, where's my carrier?
Review: If someone had thrown $20 million at Ed Wood ("Plan 9 From Outer Space") and said, "Go make a movie about the battle of Midway", this is what you would have gotten. Or something pretty darn close.

What's not to like about this movie, which sets out to depict the "Miracle of Midway," the carrier battle that turned the tide of the Pacific War? And was one of the first to use big-sound woofers brought in special into theaters? (Whump. Whump.) As it turns out, lots.

1. The Americans. Charlton 'Moses' Heston gets to play a square-jawed naval commander and reprise his role in dozens of movies from "Omega Man" and "Planet of the Apes", being the stern hero type, able to both command, and in a pinch when the Americans are running low on pilots (hm... don't remember this in the books) actually jumping into a plane and leading the charge. Hal Holbrook was great as Mark Twain but his "Jim Dandy" intelligence officer demeanor is annoying here. Henry Fonda is in his "Asteroid" cipher mode.

2. Artificially Embedded Love Interest or AELI (see "Pearl Harbor" as a reference point). Thankfully instead of Pearl Harbor's indeterminable two hours of dreck we only get about fifteen minutes or so of the duet of Heston's pouty-lipped aviator son and his Japanese-American fiancee. When Heston upbraids his son as being a complete chowderhead for considering marrying this woman, my reaction was, 'yeah, right.' She looks like a million dollars but talks like a Brooklyn Dodger, which leads me to...

3. The Japanese. Where did they find these kanaka boys? It?s a bit of a cold bath to see all these healthy corn-fed Japanese youth when they open their mouths and... they sound just like the staff at the Malibu Surf Shop. Holy cow. Japanese icon Toshiro Mifune is here, but they force him to speak English and goggle at all of the surf shop staff.

4. Stock war footage. Like Ed Wood, the producers of this movie love stock wartime footage, 'cause it's free. Color, switch to black and white, back to color... But Midway (except for the Wake Island bombing) produced little stock, and certainly none survive of the first attacks by flights like Waldron's torpedo squadron, which was wiped out. The planes don't match. Particularly bad are stock scenes of Japanese planes diving into American carriers. No such kamakaze attacks occurred during Midway. Midway was fought by first-string veterans of Pearl Harbor and they didn't go in for this sort of stuff.

5. Special effects. The non-stock footage, apart from the pretty good large scale model work of the Japanese carriers (which is probably Toho stuff) is cheesy. It all looks like actors on a grey cardboard soundstage, and we get to see the same explosions over and over again. This movie could just as easily been done in 1945. Maybe it was.

So... "Midway" is an OK kiddie film for ages 18 months and up, very little blood, no sex please, we're the Navy, and the sailors don't talk like sailors - especially Hal ("hot jiminy") Holbrook. Otherwise, go out for sushi instead. Maybe join the NRA.

Rating:
Summary: Crap
Review: This is an absolutely terrible film. Avoid it!!