Midway Barrel Rolls Away from Being Good or Bad and Flies Straight Down the Middle

Rating: 6/10 (16 November 2019)

I've taken my share of WW2 history but I never had to study the battle of Midway. So I walked into this fairly fresh and one of the more pleasant surprises was the more balanced look this movie presented. There's no confusing which side the movie is on but humanizing the antagonists always helps the drama sink in a little deeper and it helps sell how devastating this period of WW2 was. The actors playing the Japanese command (e.g. Etsushi Toyokawa and Tadanobu Asano) are given a lot of material to chew on and they succeed in getting you to at least look at their side of things. You still get the elements of cheering on the Americans (which is what most of the movie going public wants to see) but a bigger picture point of view is a unique element for Midway.
Midway boasts a surprisingly large cast, its not full of a lot of A-list actors, but you've seen all these people working in mid-large budget releases or in some well reviewed TV dramas. Leading the cast is charming but unfortunately miscast Ed Skrein. He's normally playing a villain and I was intrigued to see him go a different direction. He's working hard here but he doesn't seem to fit what this movie is going for. It doesn't help that his accent is pretty rough, hopefully he'll bounce back. Woody Harrelson is the type of performer who can elevate substandard material but he's not putting much into his interpretation of Nimitz. Nick Jonas is fine as Bruno, he's a better actor than I thought he would be but considering his background in music, he's hard to buy as a tough guy type. Much like Harrelson, there's a lot of workmanlike effort put in here (Luke Evans, Mandy Moore, Aaron Eckhart come to mind). That doesn't make the acting bad, they're all performers that are easy to like, the acting just isn't something to write home about in Midway. I'd credit Patrick Wilson and Dennis Quaid for being the most effective (even if Quaid just growls through 90% of his scenes, at least he's good at it?).
Emmerich has a more varied career as a director than you would think, but his main claim to fame is his big budget disaster flicks. You don't get those opportunities without knowing how to use special effects to deliver the goods on some action scenes (the overall quality of the movies... that's a different story). The movie didn't start well, I found the attack on Pearl Harbour to be underwhelming when it came to the action but there was plenty of movie still left to go. The scenes with Skrein's character in a dogfight or manoeuvring to dive bomb enemy ships were pretty intense and they really play up the chaotic nature of the battle. Everything is covered in smoke, shrapnel, or fire and it serves as another reminder that war is h#!! The movie delivered the thrills more regularly as it went on and by the end, I got what I wanted out of Midway.
Midway falls into a category of movie that's tough to write about. Its hard to make pointed arguments or have poignant opinions about a mediocre movie. The really good ones and the really bad ones are the easiest to write about, its the movies that leave you shrugging your shoulders when you leave the theatre that really stall your creative impulses. This is a tough genre to stand out in too, there's so many great war movies, you really have bring something shocking or affecting to the table to grab the public's attention. Emmerich's ability to work with CGI and experience shooting big set pieces keep this movie afloat. Providing more context by showing the situation from both sides is also a nice bonus to Midway. But conversely there's the cliche dialogue, the middle of the road acting and the long running time dragging it down. I'm not shocked that Midway has surprised in theatres but I could have waited for Netflix and had a similar experience viewing it. The big action scenes are cool but nothing screamed "I had to see this in a theatre!" If I hadn't seen this with a good friend, I would have called it a disappointment. Its hard to recommend Midway with being over 2.25 hours long but I wouldn't stop you from checking it out. I'd avoid paying full price and just catch it on your preferred streaming service.