Midway (1976)

I considered saving the last U.S. war movie left on my list for a patriotic holiday, much as I like to save horrors for October. But in all likelihood, I wouldn't remember on time. Besides, I was already in the mood for something very different from what else I'd seen lately.

The story begins with the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in April '42. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (Tohiro Mifune overdubbed by Paul Frees) sees it as a blessing in disguise, because now his superiors will give him carte blanche for his next move. Soon after, U.S. intelligence staff supervised by Commander Joseph Rochefort (Hal Holbrook) and monitored by composite character Captain Matthew Garth (Charlton Heston) find inconclusive evidence that Japan's next target is Midway Atoll. By the time of the eponymous battle in June, U.S. naval forces are not fully prepared and consider themselves the underdog.

An all-star cast helped persuade me to check this out. In addition to the above, we have a much-lauded performance by Henry Fonda as Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. Other familiar names to me include James Coburn, Glenn Ford, Robert Mitchum, Cliff Robertson, Pat Morita, Dabney Coleman, Erik Estrada, and Tom Selleck. The director meant nothing to me, but John Williams did the scoring.

I took some interest in the subplot involving the captain's son, Lieutenant Thomas Garth (Edward Albert). He wants to marry a Japanese American (Christina Kokubo), which will require an exemption from internment. Feelings on the matter run pretty intense on multiple fronts.

This sympathetic take may have been my first reminder that the movie was made in the '70s, not the '50s. My next reminders were a few salty words, followed by considerable bloodshed. In a later decade, the rating probably wouldn't be PG.

Alas, the love story and action sequences do not take up much of the 131 minutes. More often, we get officers on both sides of the conflict talking about what may happen. This may partly explain the epic's middling reception, tho the complaints I read focused more on it being hackneyed, underacted, or badly written.

On-screen text is plentiful, mainly for helping us keep track of where the scene is or which plane or ship we're looking at. Up front, we're told to expect a lot of RL war footage for authenticity. I only wish that it melded better with the rest. And that the makers didn't also lift fictitious footage from numerous films, famous or not.

Midway gave me the change of pace I asked for but not much else. It rarely persuaded me to care about events as much as I ought. Perhaps I was right not to watch it on a holiday.