Product: Midway (Collector's Edition) (1976)
Rating: 3.0
falls short
Midway is awesome in scope. What director Jack Smight and the producers tried to do is a grand movie about the turning point in our battle for the Pacific in WWII. It has an impressive cast: Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, Edward Albert, James Coburn, Glenn Ford, Hal Holbrook, Toshir Mifune, Robert Mitchum, Cliff Robertson, Robert Wagner, Tom Selleck, Pat Morita, and James Ingersoll, all backed by a John Williams score. But the writing was weak--there was no suspense at all in the film. They hit a side story or two, but keep them uncompelling and unresolved. They tried to show the Battle from both the Japanese and U.S. point of view, but doesn't do it as successfully as Tora! Tora! Tora!. And the spliced in actual documentary footage of dogfights and crashes, but these are obvious splices (or poor quality) and detracts from the experience of viewing the film. Great idea, awesome in scope, doesn't live up to potential.