Independence Day director Roland Emmerich directs Ed Skrein, Patrick Wilson and Luke Evans in this war drama based on the Battle of Midway, which was a clash between the American and Japanese navies that helped turn the tide of World War II.
Possibly because the movie tries to be an even-handed take on everything about Midway, it does wind up not being about anything much. Like its 1970s predecessor, it’s a big, noisy mishmash populated by two-dimensional characters. But for all that, this Midway still engages as a throwback Hollywood war film, with tolerable levels of American rah-rah.
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We've now come full circle from Star Wars, which based its flying sequences on this kind of film to begin with, but we have not developed any deeper sense of connection or meaning. Midway is just another video game substitute, an action distraction masquerading as history, draped in the flag.
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In an era when there have been so many interesting, holistic, sensitive takes on war – 1917, Hacksaw Ridge, Unbroken, Dunkirk, Jojo Rabbit – this seems like an unnecessary, jingoistic, tin-eared throwback. One of America's greatest intelligence failures and most important naval battles presented with all the nuance of a shoot-em-up video game.
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It's a "himbo" of a film; handsome to look at but not much above deck. Unfortunately, Midway treats it audience similarly.
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Ambiguity is not its goal, nor is nihilism its motivating philosophy. It aims to celebrate heroism, sacrifice, determination and grit, and if you don't like that it really does not care.
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It is rousing and respectful in its best moments and faintly ridiculous in others.
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In a post Saving Private Ryan-Dunkirk landscape, it feels astonishing anyone is still making war movies like this.
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Even a moviegoer who (like this one) is theoretically willing to see yesteryear's war-film genre reanimated with 21st-century production values will find little to love in Midway, which, despite a big budget and talented cast, is oddly unmoving.
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A big, long, loud, boring history lesson, it's a movie that opens a distance between yesterday's fights and today's.
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The film's drama is B-movie basic. But the destructive colliding metal-on-metal inferno of what war is what makes "Midway" a picture worth seeing.
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Steel battleships and raining fire are Midway's primary colours; the movie flaunts its hugeness at every turn. You'll never mistake it for the real thing, but Emmerich's eye for historical detail is scary.
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