Midway (2019)
REVIEW BY: ROBERT CHANDLER
Roland Emmerich's MIDWAY tells of four events leading up to the battle in the Pacific that was perhaps decisive in the war between the US and Japan in World War Two. It describes the chain that ran from Pearl Harbour through the Battle of the Coral Sea and the bombing raid on Tokyo by James Doolittle, to the Battle of Midway where three vital Japanese aircraft carriers were taken by surprise and sunk.
The film shows how vital "intelligence" and code-breaking was in those battles, making it clear as a starting point that Pearl Harbour was the "greatest intelligence failure in American history."
The film's VFX are painterly to match the saturated palette and are often effective; though there are one or two shots, especially of the flaming carriers at Pearl that do not look good and are visually confusing. Where the VFX really takes flight is in the depiction of the US air force's Dauntless fighter/dive-bombers. These aircraft, considered obsolete at the start of the war, are the real heroes of the film, and their edge-of-your-seat dive-bombing runs on the Japanese fleet are terrifying and exhilarating to watch. You really get a sense of the sheer amount of white-hot hell's-teeth metal being hurled at the aircraft as they descend, both from the ship-mounted anti-aircraft guns and from the Japanese fighters, the modern, superior designed, Mitsubishi Zero. So many Dauntless pilots and gunners lost their lives in the attacks.
Where the film falls down is in its depiction of its characters, all of whom were based on real people. Emmerich and his scriptwriter, Wes Tooke, appear not to have a facility for crafting rounded characters. As in many Emmerich films, they are caricatures, and this aspect is a let-down, not least because it was a predictable expectation. The caricaturing doesn't sink the film, but one is aware of how much more powerful it might have been. Emmerich's propensity for caricaturing sometimes works, look at his INDEPENDENCE DAY, which I think is a near-perfect film, or his GODZILLA, which I hold as superior to the couple of recent, messy, badly told US Godzilla films.
Three of the cast are very good: Nick Jonas makes his engineer Bruno Gaido stand out in a sea of similar status naval crew; Woody Harrelson dials it back (for once) in his portrayal of Admiral Nimitz, though somehow he still manages to steal every scene he is in, aided by a hairpiece that makes him look like Spencer Tracy in Father of the Bride; and Patrick Wilson, gives, as ever, a quietly brilliant performance as intel chief, Edwin Layton. Much of Wilson's dialogue is there to tell us what is going on, but he makes it work so that it is more than merely exposition; it is the thing that contributed so much to the outcome of the battles. Wilson is the heart of the film, the conscience, the man who brings gravity to a story that would be over-run with the visual fireworks of its battle scenes.
I am a huge fan of Ed Skrein and I really wanted him to carry this film as its lead character, Dauntless pilot Dick Best. He almost does, but Skrein is too icy. It's why he usually gets cast as bad guys (his Ajax in DEADPOOL, his face-off villain Zapan in ALITA BATTLE ANGEL, his racist cop in IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK). I wanted him to "Barry Pepper" the role and win the film but, alas, he just doesn't get there. Why not cast an American in such a vital part?
It's not easy telling a story such as MIDWAY. The film-makers get the battle scenes right, and they make the film thrilling and watchable, it's never dull, but for it to be a great film, the human stuff has to work, too. I think of Philip Kaufman's THE RIGHT STUFF as a superlative (three-hour) film that told its story of the space race clearly through its ensemble of protagonists; with each character defined and true. The Right Stuff shares an actor with Midway in Dennis Quaid, who is almost grotesque in the Emmerich film, the hot-dog grinning beauty gone; the face now a war zone of surgery, carrying the burden of his character's responsibilities.
The score feels modelled on John William's restrained bugle and martial drum soundtrack to SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. Except here it is turned up to eleven and laid on too thick, barely giving us time to think for ourselves how to react to a scene, or asking us to feel the same grief the characters do for a dead comrade, when, in terms of the narrative, that sense of grief from the viewer hasn't yet been earned.
There's some fun in the middle with a portrayal of legendary Hollywood director, John Ford, landing on Midway to shoot a documentary just before the Japanese attack. Ford tells his cameraman to get on the roof and "keep turning" as the bullets fly. This all happened, and Ford's 1942 documentary short, THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY, stands as a testament to his presence in the thick of war.
Emmerich's MIDWAY also stands as a testament. Critics are bashing it, but many veterans and soldiers are taking to the movie. The real men portrayed are given a roll-call at the end with graphics telling us what happened to them after the war. It's genuinely stirring.