SOLID BATTLE SCENES CAN’T SAVE ‘MIDWAY’
There’s an intangible but unmistakable thing that happens sometimes. You’re watching a movie from another era — in the case of “Midway,” 1942. There’s a nightclub scene. A woman is singing, backed by a big band. There are soldiers and USO girls, and couples are dancing, and you think … No. Wait. That doesn’t seem right. That’s not 1942.
This happens throughout “Midway.” Those are not 1942 people. That’s not the people we know from movies. The soldiers don’t look lean and hard and from another time, like they do in the newsreels. And why does an officer tell an enlisted man, “You gotta suck it up?”
“Midway” is the story of the decisive battle in the Pacific theater of World War II, as such, it dramatizes a remarkable bit of history. Just that much gets the movie halfway there. Basically, “Midway” is strong in the beginning, when we have faith that it’s going to give us a detailed, comprehensible overview of this extraordinary battle. And it loses energy as director Roland Emmerich gradually gets himself lost in the weeds.
Every so often, in the field of human conflict, a relatively small group of people find themselves burdened with the task of defending democracy and civilization: Gettysburg. The Battle of Britain. Midway was one of those this-is-the-whole ballgame battles, and the movie works to the extent that it conveys that now-or-never sense of crisis.
It begins with the Pearl Harbor attack, which Emmerich mostly presents as a shooting-fish-in-a-barrel situation, as seen from the perspective of the fish. It’s all the more terrifying as it comes straight out of a blue sky on a sunny morning. This gives the audience a sense of American vulnerability in that era, and the details that follow confirm it: The United States has only three aircraft carriers. The Japanese have seven, and if they act fast, they can wipe out America’s ability to defend itself.
The battle of Midway comes about when the Japanese decide to spring a surprise attack to destroy the United States’ remaining aircraft carriers, a move designed to give them access to Hawaii and the entire West Coast of the United States. The Japanese have the numbers and the firepower, but the Americans have a major advantage. They’ve broken the Japanese code, and so the Americans know — or think they know — how and when Japan will be attacking.
The movie builds its story on a handful of characters. Woody Harrelson, white wig and all, is Fleet Admiral Nimitz, who is in charge of Pacific operations. Patrick Wilson plays Edwin Layton, the code breaker upon whose intelligence the mission depends. And Ed Skrein plays Dick Best, a tough aviator whose attack squadron is charged with destroying the Japanese aircraft carriers.
From the beginning, “Midway” has awkward dialogue and an atmosphere that seems a bit too 2019, but for a time, the movie’s high stakes make up for that. Emmerich shows what it’s like to be on the deck of a ship, facing divebombing planes, and he shows what it’s like to be in one of those planes, descending directly into antiaircraft fire. Curiously, neither seems more secure than the other. It’s equally frightening.
There’s definitely something to the strategy of throwing audiences into the action, but after about an hour of screen time, Emmerich starts getting stuck in those firefights, and the audience loses the thread of the larger picture. Sometimes we can’t even tell whose planes are attacking, and unless we know the history, we can’t tell who’s winning or losing.