Formula:
(1.5 * Pearl Harbor) - Star power
Emmerich, a German director, is perhaps Hollywood's
foremost American nostalgist. He made his name with Independence Day,
about how a bunch of Americans stopped an alien invasion thanks to the
inspiring leadership of Bill Pullman as the President. Shortly after that, he
made The Patriot, about the southern farm owner who didn't own slaves and
helped win the Revolutionary War. Don't forget about White House Down,
in which a Secret Service recruit and a different fictional President stop a
terrorist attack on Washington DC. Midway may be his masterwork of
idealized American heroism.
If you know history or have seen enough WWII movies,
you should be aware of the story of the movie. After the Japanese bomb Pearl
Harbor, the U.S. Naval force is left at a severe disadvantage against the
Japanese fleet. Through savvy code-breaking, the U.S. Navy eventually gets a
beat on the Japanese and turn the tide of the war at sea in the Battle of
Midway. The movie tells the story by splitting time between several naval
pilots, high ranking officials, and intelligence officers who are all based on
real life heroes.
It's incredible how unnuanced all the performances
are. It takes no more than two lines of dialogue for you to know exactly which
character type everyone is playing. Sometimes, all it takes is hearing a
character's accent to know everything about him. That's certainly the case with
Ed Skerin as hot shot New Jersey pilot Dick Best. And, I actually don't think
anyone does a bad job. Patrick Wilson, Woody Harrelson, Luke Evans, Mandy
Moore, Dennis Quaid, Nick Jonas, and a dozen other familiar [if not famous]
faces are all good at doing what Roland Emmerich wants them to do. I just
imagine Emmerich instructed them to play it like they were in a U.S. military
propaganda film. There isn't much room for irony, and that works in the movie's
favor.
This movie is such a tease too. Emmerich knows that
the selling point is the exciting naval action. After the early Japanese
attack, the audience is waiting for the moment when the U.S. punches back.
Naval warfare is low accuracy though. The game Battleship is pretty accurate.
It's tough to get a direct hit. And Emmerich teases it out for a while.
Torpedoes break. Submarine attacks miss Japanese ships. Bombing raids are full
of close misses. When a bomb finally connects with a Japanese aircraft carrier,
it's damn near cathartic. I didn't realize how tense I'd gotten while waiting
for the U.S. battle plan to finally work, and when it did, that stirred
excitement in me.
That's not to say the battle sequences are
masterfully done. It was a little too easy to see the seams of all the CGI. The
geography of most battles was hard to follow. I rarely knew where two pilots
were in relation to each other or the battle as a whole. Frankly, I don't
understand the difference between the kinds of ships (carriers, destroyers,
cruisers), so I missed a lot of strategic cues.
At this point, it's obvious why Rolland Emmerich
"only" got a $60 million budget for this, why the production credits
read more like that of an indie movie struggling for distribution, and why
there are no A-list actors in the movie. He's had a bad run of movies lately.
The naked sentimentality that made him a box office success in the late
90s/early 2000s doesn't play as well now. And, instead of trying to adapt to
what works now, he's doubling down on what he did before. I enjoyed Midway,
because it is still a "people doing their damn job" movie, about
people with a job to do, doing it well. There are no characters I connected
with the way that characters in his past movies have. I'm not sure what
Emmerich's next move is. I'm starting to suspect that he has nothing left to
say. He can still make a good distraction, but is that enough?
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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