Product: Midway (Collector's Edition) (1976)
Rating: 4.0
One of the better war movies
As the title suggests, this entire movie is about the Battle of Midway during WWII. The cast of characters is a veritable "Who's Who" in American theatre. The actor playing Admiral Yamamoto, Toshiro Mifune, is a famous Japanese actor of many Kirosawa movies. In this movie, as much actual war footage was used.There are several stories going on at once, and the film does its best to weave them all together. We see an admiral sick in Pearl Harbor with a skin rash; the numerous miscommunications as admirals jockey for position near Midway; Ensign George Gay downed in the water and watching the battle from there; and a love story.The last two there seem to distract me from the movie. I don't think they are wrong, but the time dedicated to updating them makes me wonder why they are there. The love story tells us about the paranoia in the United States toward Japanese Americans, but it really doesn't go into much detail. This part of the story could have made a movie by itself, but as is, there is not enough information to make it worthwhile to the picture.I would still recommend seeing this movie. Although Heston gets the lion's share of attention, I like the scenes showing Henry Fonda as Admiral Nimitz. Great stuff.