excellent war drama

Rating: 10/10 (16 December 2019)

This is an excellent film with an accurate portrayal of historic events. I had misgivings about it when I had heard the director of Independence Day would be doing it but he actually did a great job at staying true to history while making it entertaining. He didn't simply focus on the heroism of our American soldiers but also covered other aspects that contributed to our success such as code-breaking, strategy and sheer luck. He crammed a lot into a 2 hour film. Many historical names, places and events were mentioned in passing and if you're not familiar with this battle you might miss them. But no matter, you'll still get the gist of this film.
The aerial battles were beautifully shot and the attention to historical accuracy was incredible. This film did justice to the code-breaking aspect and treated the Japanese with respect, even though they were the enemy. Because of its historical accuracy, this film could pass for a docudrama. On the other hand, it covered a lot at the expense of character development, although it did manage to focus on a few protagonists.
Roland Emmerich's Midway is a historically accurate, beautifully shot film with none of the fictional romantic soap opera that weighed down the 1976 version or Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor. It's puzzling that critics didn't like it. Perhaps they forgot this film was a historical drama and there's no room for a fictional event or character to promote their social justice agenda. They complained about the lack of character development. Again, this film needed to cover a lot of history in 2 hours so something had to give. That said, many of the characters were adequately developed, which is more than I can say for The Last Jedi. Oddly, critics overlooked the non-existent character development in The Last Jedi and laughably praised it anyway. Midway is a far superior film and is just another film that's exposed the critics' bias. Ignore the paid critics and take it from me, someone who hasn't been paid by any studio to write this review: Go see this film!