Product: Midway (Collector's Edition) (1976)
Rating: 4.0
Great Film When It Sticks To History
"Midway" has it's flaws to be sure. The pointless fictional sub-plot involving Charlton Heston's son and his Nisei fiancee seems like a concession to PC sensitivities about Nisei internment. The overuse of stock footage instead of constructing new miniatures doesn't help either and the Japanese characters should have spoken Japanese with subtitles. But when Midway sticks to real history, as it does for most of the film it is quite gripping and fascinating. It was because of this movie, which I first saw on the CBS Late Movie in 1981, that I became fascinated with the battle and ended up buying every book that's ever been written about it. As a result, I can never condemn this movie too harshly because of what it ultimately led me to.I do wish though, that it could get a good DVD treatment, with the theatrical cut on one side (which uses John Williams "Midway March" for the end credits) and the longer TV-version on side two (which recreates the Battle of Coral Sea and uses the alternate "Men Of The Yorktown March" for the end credits). It certainly deserves this kind of DVD treatment a lot more than Steven Spielberg's hideous "1941" did.