Product: Midway (Collector's Edition) (1976)
Rating: 4.0
Not a great film, but it tells the story of the battle pretty well
I watched this movie with my teenage son in order to give him a bit of history about WWII. We first watched "Tora, tora, tora" and then this film to see our response to the attack on Pearl Harbor. This is a good film, but not as good as "Tora, tora, tora".Every movie must make choices and distort history, but the best do their best to try and tell the real story or at least give the impression of it. This movie does that and I commend them for it. However, the whole Charton Heston - Edward Albert relationship seems sort of stuck into the movie. Yes, it was good to get a statement against the Japanese Internment in (Edward Albert's character is trying to marry an American girl of Japanese descent. She and her parents are picked up and being ready for transport to a camp on the mainland.), but it just seems out of place in the battle film. I think "Tora, tora, tora's" focus on the war is a much better and stronger approach.While most of these WWII films used newsreel footage from the war (and that makes sense), I did not like using footage from other movies. That scene of the jeep smashing into a building after a bomb goes off is obviously from "Tora, tora, tora" and is kind of embarrassing."Tora, tora, tora" was a joint film with Japan and used Japanese actors. Here the Japanese actors are really American and speak with American accents and that is fine. However, they also brought in Toshiro Mifune as Admiral Yamomoto. If you look at his lips, he is trying to speak English, but I suppose his accent was so out of place with all the other American accents that they had Paul Frees dub his voice. So, why have Mifune? I mean the role of an officer is one where he just looks stern, troubled, and makes decisions. I am sure there was a Japanese-American actor who could have done that role without dubbing.But the story of the chess game, the code breaking, and the way the Yorktown was sent to sea without repairs after the battle of Coral Sea is told quite well. And for this the movie is very much worth seeing. Just overlook its flaws as much as you can and take away its strengths.Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI