Midway (Collector's Edition)
|
| ||||||||||||
 Looking Certain Death In the Face. Without this clash, who knows how the war would have gone. Brave Pilots follow their leaders into sacrifice. American Sammuri! Midway is like all battles, they are won by which side does not make the most mistakes. Midway - a true account If you want to know the amazing events which took placed which turned the WW2 Pacific War tide to the favor of the U.S. Navy, then you have to watch this movie which by the way has a fantastic cast. Big stars and talented character actors come together to present one fine telling of the Battle of Midway. There is action, stradegy, personal drama, bravery, subperb filming, and more. This movie excellently done. A great movie I bought this movie for my parents. They lived during this time and are very interested in WWII movies.  Miracle at Midway 1976's "Midway" is very much in the tradition of other World War II movie epics such as "The Longest Day" and "A Bridge Too Far" in packing a star-studded cast around a key battle. "Midway" depicts the surprising June 1942 victory by a U.S. Naval Carrier Task Force over a far larger Japanese Fleet attempting to seize Midway Island, located north west of the Hawaiian Islands. Henry Fonda stars as Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Nimitz. On the basis of intercepted Japanese communications, and against the advice of his staff, the soft-spoken but tough-minded Nimitz gambles his three surviving aircraft carriers on the opportunity to ambush the Japanese Fleet near Midway. Hal Holbrooke has a nice cameo as the eccentric Naval cryptographer who made the key intelligence assessment. Robert Mitchum also has a nice cameo as the famous fighting Admiral Bill Halsey, bed-ridden with a tropical skin disease, who must defer command of his carrier task force to Rear Admiral Raymond Spruance (played by veteran character actor Ed Nelson). Overall command of the U.S. force would be exercised by Admiral Jack Fletcher (a pitch-perfect performance by Glenn Ford). The connecting thread in the long (two-plus hours) movie is fictional Navy Captain Matt Garth (played with jut-jawed determination by Charlton Heston). Garth, a fighter pilot recovering from a wound, starts the movie as Nimitz's aide, is transferred to Spruance's staff for the Midway mission, and ends up back in the cockpit of a dive bomber for the decisive air strike against the Japanese fleet. His life is complicated by a sub-plot involving the arrival in Hawaii of his estranged son (played by Edward Albert), a rookie naval aviator who is engaged to an interned Japanese-American woman. Garth's attempts to help his son make contact with his fiance draw the ire of security forces, while his request to an old friend (Cliff Robertson in a cameo) to look after his son results in the son's precipitious transfer to one of the Midway-bound carriers. The engagement at sea interweaves movie scenes with real combat footage from the battle. The action shifts rapidly between the Commander and staff of the Japanese carrier force and the pilots of a variety of U.S. aircraft seeking and then attacking the Japanese ships. The resulting sequences may replicate some of the chaos of combat but are apt to be confusing to the average viewer. The respective fates of Garth and his son provide a poignant ending to the battle. "Midway" does a reasonable job of narrating the story of an almost miraculous U.S. victory. The production values, in terms of authentic-looking ships, aircraft, vehicles, and uniforms, are solid. However, the insertion of "name" actors in a variety of small roles becomes almost distracting, as none of these parts get enough screen time for real character development. The edited VHS and DVD versions of the movie seem to be shorter than the original theatrical release, and to lose some story exposition in the process. This movie is recommended to fans of the World War II movie genre, who will be able to appreciate the authenticity of the sets and who will find this an entertaining production. | |||||||||||||
