MIDWAY (1976)
DIRECTOR:
Jack Smight
CAST:
AMERICANS:
Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, James Coburn, Glenn Ford, Hal Holbrook, Robert Mitchum, Cliff Robertson, Robert Wagner, Edward Albert, Glenn Corbett, Dabney Coleman, Christopher George, Steve Kanaly, Kip Niven, Tom Selleck, Monte Markham, Ed Nelson, Kevin Dobson and Robert Webber.
JAPANESE:
Toshiro Mifune, James Shigeta, Noriyuki “Pat” Morita, Sab Shimono, John Fujioka, Lloyd Kino, Conrad Yama, Robert Ito, Clyde Kusatsu and Dale Ishimoto.
REVIEW:
From the first shot of this film, it’s not really clear if “Midway” was intended as a theatrical movie and then expanded for television viewing, or if it was shot was a television miniseries and then cut down to 132 minutes for theatrical release and re-released to TV with the excised footage put back in. Whatever the case may be, “Midway” is one Hollywood war movie that should never have made it to the big screen. It simply did not and still does not deserve to be there.
For those unfamiliar with the plot of this hash, I will enlighten thee: In June of 1942, the Japanese planned a surprise attack on the American naval base at Midway Island. This would give them access to an airstrip from which they could attack the American mainland. American code breakers stumbled upon this plan, and the US Navy rushed out to the Pacific to engage the Japanese task force. It became one of the most significant turning points in the Pacific theater. Sounds like a mighty entertaining premise for a movie, doesn’t it? Eh, think again.
I’ll be honest: as a little kid of age 8 or 9, I loved “Midway”. The cable network TNT used to show the miniseries version every Memorial Day, and it was something I refused to miss. Those aerial dogfights were terrific. Almost 10 years later, with another 300 war movies under my belt, I can say am not proud of those days of my youth. Everything about “Midway” is bad, except, maybe, Hal Holbrook’s performance. Don’t want to take my word for it? Well, I’ve got evidence to back up my claims.
“Midway” boasts a stellar all-star cast, much like “The Longest Day” and “A Bridge too Far”. This could be a great thing – every one of the leads is a legend in their own right with marvelous acting talent. Here, watching them is a pure waste of time. Most of the big-name actors are shuffled on-and-off stage so quickly that they don’t make much (if any) impact at all. James Coburn, Cliff Robertson and Toshiro Mifune are the most embarrassing examples. Coburn only has a few lines as an intelligence officer who shows up to investigate Admiral Nimitz’s theory of an enemy attack; Robertson gets to mutter profanity about everyone and everything in a singular bar scene with Charlton Heston; and as Yamamoto, Mifune is badly dubbed by Paul Frees, the voice of TV’s ``Bullwinkle”.
The only good actor who actually gets something to do is Heston as Captain Garth, whose credibility is ruined because all of his dramatic moments revolve around his pretty-boy son, played pretty poorly by Edward Albert. His best moment come when he’s engaged in discussion with Fonda, and later on, gets into a heated debate with an old friend played by the devious Ed Nelson. I’ll admit that Fonda tries hard as Nimitz, but even after seeing this movie dozens of times, there’s nothing memorable about his performance. Hal Holbrook is a real standout as the oblivious Commander Rochefort, the intelligence officer responsible for cracking the Japanese code. He’s a pleasure to watch, even if he has only a few scenes.
The Japanese actors don’t get much to do except deliver long-winded speeches about the importance of defeating the Americans at Midway or engage in boring explanations of how their tactics will be employed. To make matters worse, both the American and Japanese commanders constantly move little model ships around on a big board representing the Pacific Ocean. We want to see ships at sea. We want to see things getting blown up. We don’t want to constantly hear people talk about doing this and move little toy bots around with long sticks. We want to see it actually happen.
When it does finally happen, every bit of the attempts to re-create the battle come off as distorted and false. Instead of shooting original footage, Director Jack Smight and Producer Walter Mirisch elected to combine the use of actual battle footage and stock shots from several other World War II movies. The combination is very unsuccessful and poorly edited. For one thing, much of the action revolves around stock footage from the Japanese drama “I Bombed Pearl Harbor”, which uses cheap-looking miniatures. Then there’s a jarring cut to gun camera footage or shaky footage from the 1940s of a ship blowing up. Come on! With “A Bridge too Far” produced less than a year later, the battle scenes could have been made much more convincing!
What irks me even more is that the entire Japanese side of the story is lifted almost shot-for-shot from “I Bombed Pearl Harbor”. I don’t just mean the action footage; I mean the dialogue and even the framing of several scenes. It’s just like watching the exact same sequences over again, only played out with different actors. It’s a shame that the great Toshiro Mifune and James Shigeta (as Adm. Nagumo) were wasted in roles essentially hacked right out of other “forgotten” scripts. It looks as though no time or energy was put into the Japanese sequences: not only do the characters lack any dimensionality, but the sets which serve as ship’s bridges and war-rooms look like they’re made of cardboard.
The movie starts out well enough, with a great scene between Garth and Rochefort about the ability of the Navy intelligence department. Even the first exchange between Heston and Albert seems like it has potential to set up a strong, developed subplot. But shortly thereafter, the script loses itself in a muddle of individual details and before long we could care less about the proceedings. And it’s all wrapped up with one of the most clichéd, gung-ho climaxes ever shot, in which Captain Garth, here only as an advisor, heroically jumps into a vacant bomber and takes off with fellow pilots to attack the last enemy ship and winds up crash-landing on the deck of his own carrier.
And it gets worse – well, perhaps better. As I have stated, “Midway” was also released in a miniseries form, running over 3 hours without commercials. The miniseries cuts or re-dubs most of the profanity and the more graphic shots of violence, but also contains between 40 and 50 minutes of new footage. The new scenes add character depth to both Garth and Nagumo. Garth has a dimensional relationship with a young woman played by Susan Sullivan and Nagumo is friends with a young reconnaissance pilot, who dies at the Battle of the Coral Sea – an event which leads Nagumo to question the hopeful attitudes of his fellow officers. We also see the Coral Sea battle played out in the same fashion as the actual Midway engagement, although much of the combat footage and radio exchanges between the pilots are simply shots and snippets of dialogue taken from the Midway battle sequences. The miniseries version is preferable, but has not been released on DVD or home video, or shown on network television since the late 1990s.
For the masses, “Midway” can serve as a very entertaining if ultimately hollow World War II drama. It’s undeniably good, faithful history. But for a serious fan of war films, its flaws are more than evident and the few good things about it get lost in the mess of the bad editing, bland script and cheap feel of the entire production. It’s impossible for any serious critic to say that this is a good movie, because, really, it simply sucks.
SGT. SLAUGTHER'S RATING:
1 Bullet
