expected better...

Rating: Null/10 (7 November 2019)

While sitting in the theatre, I was sure most men wanted to be them, and most women wanted to do them. Hell, when I watched Dick Best dive bomb a Japanese destroyer and then turn back and go at them one more time as if he was returning a few rounds of blazing hot lead he borrowed last week, I briefly considered giving my wife a hall-pass for him that night; only him, though.
That, though, is the problem I have with Roland Emmerich's Midway, the mercurial, big-screen action director, whose new film is much more Independence Day than Saving Private Ryan. These CGI special effects are great to look at, gorgeous even, but cartoonish because so much of it is computer-generated. You never have the feeling that if you reach out, you could touch a live-action plane; this is Star Wars, but now instead of Star Fighters and Y-Wings they are Aichi D34 Carrier-Borne Bombers, Douglas SDB-3 Dauntless Dive Bombers, and Douglas TBD Devastators; the carriers and destroyers are Star Cruisers and Death Stars. The film though, you are talking about a film which is so heavily invested in flight and vintage aircraft that it does an admirable job. The team here does build up a certain amount of suspense and thrills; mainly, the dive-bombing scenes gave me a sense of awe-struck pride and amazement. It's almost the equivalent of a child playing with a toy plane, and making bomb noises with their mouths as they send the plane towards the mother's carpeted family room floor (not the living room floor, that's the room always marked off for "company"). The film's scripted dialogue is recycled from war films of its own ilk multiple decades before, even though I was slightly relieved when they did acknowledge sacrifices on the other side of unseen events by civilians.