Midway: Review by @Kush_Hayes
This movie is boring. Im no expert on World War II, or even history overall for that matter so I dont know how much of Roland Emmerichs adaptation of Wes Tookes screenplay of Midway is accurate. I do know that while not every movie Roland Emmerich has made has been good, none of them I can say have been boring. Before now.
Im not 100% sure how to go about this review. While this isnt a flat zero, its bland in every form. At no point do I feel we are at war once we reach Pearl Harbor. The gravity of that day that lives in infamy doesnt feel like it carries any weight. This movie is supposed to be based on real people during this period of time, but all of them feel like generic action roles.
We start our movie with Patrick Wilson out in a local Japanese tea garden engaging in some tradition with the British and Japanese in the winter of 1937. Wilson and the Japanese Representative played by Tadanobu Asano and despite how I started this review, they do have a fun back and forth interaction in Asanos native language expressing that things arent entirely stable between them and the United States.
We get a title card advancing us four years to 1941 the week of the Attack of Pearl Harbor. And after meeting a few characters especially those who basically announce to the audience theyre going to die by declaring its their last day before they go home. We are then suddenly thrust into the attack on Dec 7th and it feels pretty light. Any gravity that should be in this scene as an entire fleet is taken by surprise comes off hollow.
From there we get the usual address by FDR over the radio. The Americans wax poetic about how they’rer going to serve justice, while the Japanses reflect that they may have just made a huge mistake in only completing their objective by 99%.
This movie doesnt try to hide the horrors of war, but what these men went through in this movie compared to other WWII movies is completely different. While the infantry is crawling face down in the mud, these guy in Hawaii are still going home to their wives most nights if not every night. And maybe that isnt a fair comparison cinema wise, but even Michael Bays Pearl Harbor had some consequences to their characters actions. While everyone does a fine job of acting in this film, from Woody Harrelson, Dennis Quaid, Nick Jonas and Mandy Moore all the way up to the lead Ed Skirin their characters feel like their going through the motions of a war film.
This film has an incredible cast. Roland Emmerich knows how to direct an action scene and make it entertaining, but the writing in this film is just bad and holds a lot of the performances down.
Two out of Six Blueberries
Rated PG-13 for sequences of war violence and related images, language and smoking
© 2019 TheBosNet Family All Rights Reserved
