Mehway

Rating: 3/10 (1 December 2019)

This movie is confused. It's an exploration of the conflict between American and Japanese forces in the Pacific from primarily the American perspective and yet the movie has nearly half of its budget coming from Chinese backers. I don't generally care where the money comes from on these movies but in this case I feel like it might have something to do with the confusion.
We get a lot of time on both the American and Japanese sides of things with the Americans often treated like the clumsy buffoons who accidental themselves into victories while the Japanese have the superior force and skill yet suffer from sheer rotten luck. Which is maybe how it really happened, I don't pretend to know, but it doesn't film well.
That alone wouldn't kill it, but clumsy plot movements don't help and neither does an unnecessary number of underdeveloped characters. Couple that with a firm jaunt into the uncanny valley with the effects and this movie is a mess. Too much of the budget must have gone to the cast and not to the finishing touches on the visuals because there are times planes are crashing into the ocean and it looks like an AR effect I could get on my phone.
Weirdly, despite all of that, I didn't hate this movie, it just wasn't very good and a surprisingly disappointing theatre experience.