Story of the Battle of Midway

Rating: 7/10 (25 November 2019)

Although there already exists a film about this battle, released in 1976 starring Charlton Heston and Henry Fonda, the new one is actually better. All the major characters in the new film are historical, whereas the character played by Heston is fictional, and the earlier film has a totally unnecessary inter-racial romantic sub-plot. The old film began by showing the Doolittle raid, but the new one starts in Japan in 1937 at a dinner party hosted by Admiral Yamamoto (Etsushi Toyokawa) and attended by Assistant Naval Attache Lieutenant-Commander Edwin Layton (Patrick Wilson) in which they discuss the possibility of a war between their two countries. It then fast forwards to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle raid. (Doolittle himself is played by Aaron Eckhart.) The film actually focuses on Navy pilot Lieutenant Dick Best (Ed Skrein), who was one of the dive bombers who took out the Japanese aircraft carriers during the battle, and his wife Ann (Mandy Moore). Admirals Halsey and Nimitz are played by Dennis Quaid and Woody Harrelson, respectively, but Admiral Spruance (Jake Weber), who actually commanded the U.S. Navy forces during the battle, is given a rather short shrift. Of course, in the original film they actually had to fly real planes and use models to represent ships, but now they can use CGI, which is excellent. On the other hand, the characterizations seemed clichéd, and the film makers felt obligated to insert frequent info dumps.