Movie Review: Midway (2019)

Genre: Historical War Action  

Director: Roland Emmerich  

Starring: Ed Skrein, Luke Evans, Dennis Quaid, Aaron Eckhart, Woody Harrelson, Patrick Wilson  

Running Time: 138 minutes  

Synopsis: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor in December 1941, but fails to destroy American aircraft carriers. The United States enters the war and Japan's Admiral Yamamoto starts planning an attack on Midway Island to achieve dominance over the Pacific. The US intelligence team headed by Lieutenant Commander Edwin Layton (Patrick Wilson) intercepts enemy communications and starts to piece together the Japanese attack plan, allowing Admiral Nimitz (Woody Harrelson) to mobilize a defence. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle (Aaron Eckhart) leads an air raid on Tokyo to unsettle the enemy, while Vice Admiral William "Bull" Halsey (Dennis Quaid) and ace Navy pilots Dick Best (Ed Skrein) and Wade McClusky (Luke Evans) are involved in the escalating war in the Pacific. 

What Works Well: This is an unapologetically old-fashioned World War 2 action movie, faithful to historical fact and dedicated to celebrating heroism, sacrifice, and determination under fire. Despite an ambitious scope covering several major battles and culminating at Midway, writer Wes Tooke admirably maintains cohesion in melding strategic Yamamoto and Nimitz-level maneuverings with the front-line exploits of Best and McClusky, among many others, effectively capturing the critical strategic decisions and in-the-heat of the moment actions upon which history turned. Director Roland Emmerich delivers several stirring naval combat scenes, and maintains focus on individual sub-stories within the chaos of attack, defense, and counter-attack at sea. 

What Does Not Work As Well: The CGI effects are impressive but predictably over-done, and the out-of-uniform lives of the characters are essentially non-existent. The cast members do their job with minimum fuss, but quantity defeats quality and none are provided the opportunity to rise above basic representations.

Key Quote:

Edwin Layton (to Nimitz, in reference to Pearl Harbor): Sir, I'm the intelligence officer responsible for overseeing the greatest intelligence failure in American history.

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