Review of Midway (2019) by Davrosdaleks1 — 09 Nov 2019

For a movie with a lot of action, I was a little bored.

This is helmed by disaster movie director Roland Emmerich. He is a guy who found his voice in the 90's, and this movie kind of feels like it was made during that decade. The execution is too light for its own good. I don't mean this in a complimentary way. Dialogue is undercooked and at times cliched. I felt like a lot of good actors were wasted here. There is a lot of quick jumping from scene-to-scene. Yes, I know this is one of those war movies that look at many players, but even by the standards of these types of films, the scenes often don't hold weight.

Also, this movie feels kind of odd for today. More recent war movies have tried to look at the more realistic and darker elements of the subject and the human toll and psychology of it all. Not that this movie isn't about human sacrifice, but this tries to be more of a crowdpleaser like the war films of yesteryear. It feels out of place in today's climate. Of course, I could just be jaded. If you want to see movie honoring those who died for our county, then this might be for you. The movie does a good job of laying out how the battle of Midway went down on both the American and Japanese fronts and evoking the old feel of wide-scale military battle films. Emmerich maintains his eye for action. The combat scenes are all done well. The computer graphics aren't the best; none of them look realistic enough. In Emmerich's defense, I give him credit for showing a lot of them during full daylight scenes, which is trickier than doing them during night or in grey/blue lighting. Also, props to hair and costumes in this. Overall, this is a movie that looks good enough but just doesn't stand out.