After its – successful – run in the cinemas, Midway was
re-edited into a two-part TV mini-series. To be honest, that feels more like
its natural home. It’s competently directed by Jack Smight – but no more than
that – and revolves around several scenes of star-actors pushing models around
maps and less famous actors pretending to fly planes in front of blue-screen. The
film makes a proud statement at the start of how it has chosen to use only actual
archive combat footage to “honour those who fought” – but this actually, you
suspect, was motivated more by the fact it’s much cheaper to purchase and clean
up piles of stock footage than it is to shoot things afresh.
The main narrative covers the planning and the crucial day
of the battle itself. A brief “human interest” story is introduced via Charlton
Heston’s (fictional) Captain Matt Garth, an aide of Admiral Nimitz. Will Chuck
improve his relationship with his fighter pilot son, who has fallen in love
with a Japanese girl? Whadda you think? Saying that, this rather clumsy human-interest
story (which features the only female character in the film) does make some
interestingly critical points about the policy of internment against Japanese
Americans – stressing both the injustice and explicit racism (American Germans
and Italians faced no such fate) behind the policy.
In fact, Midway is very sympathetic in general to the
Japanese – as Nimitz even says at the end, perhaps it was less a question of
skill than luck that led to the final outcome. The Japanese navy is presented
as an honourable and thoughtful opponent, respectful of human life and
conducting the war via a code of honour (the kamikaze runs of cliché are completely
absent). In particular Admiral Naguma (well played by James Shigeta, in
possibly the film’s stand out performance) is a decent man caught-out
continuously by horrendous luck and timing, who pays a heavy price. Midway
is strong in stressing there is no leeway at sea – get caught out there and
it’s the bottom of the briney for you.
The Japanese planning is even slightly tragic in its flawed
assumptions – crucially they are totally unaware that their codes are broken
and that, far from launching a surprise strike, they are actually sailing into
something of a trap – while Toshiro Mifune brings a lot of nobility to Yamamoto
even if all he really does is pensively stare at a series of maps.
On the American side, Fonda leads the way, giving Nimitz
more than a touch of Fordian home-spun heroism. Heston’s presence does well to
link together the various true-life characters and location. Most of the rest
of the all-star cast are restricted to one or two scenes: Coburn rocks up to
handover a report from Washington, Wagner briefly pushes models across a table
in a planning room and (hilariously of all) Mitchum delivers both his tiny scenes
from a hospital bed, coated in skin cream.
When the action gets going though, it’s done pretty well
with the po-faced, stodgy seriousness these war-time later 70s epics nearly all
seemed to have in common. The stock footage does actually look pretty good and
the drama of the battle – and the tactics – are captured fairly well. It’s
intermixed with some real ships and all scored with a great deal of punch by
John Williams. It’s all really B-movie, TV-movie-of-the-week stuff but it’s
also far from obviously flag-waving either, instead doing its best to be
even-handed and even a little bit critical. You’ll learn what happened and also
have a bit of fun into the bargain.
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