Midway (2019) * *

Directed by:  Roland Emmerich

Starring:  Ed Skrein, Patrick Wilson, Woody Harrelson, Dennis Quaid, Nick Jonas, Luke Evans, Aaron Eckhart, Mandy Moore, Darren Criss

Midway is Pearl Harbor minus the insipid love triangle.   The CGI-aided visuals of the opening Pearl Harbor attack scenes are surprisingly cheesy.   The actors stand or run in front of unconvincing CGI sets behind them.   The air battle scenes, which fly by in a blur, look better but it's hard to keep track of what's happening.   All we know is the United States won an important military battle with three more years of war still to go.   I sincerely hope this isn't a spoiler for you.

I guess a World War II movie wouldn't be complete without a soldier or pilot with a Noo Yawk accent taking center strange.    Here, it is Dick Best (Skrein), a 1970's porn star name if there ever was one.   Dick is a cocky pilot stationed in the Pacific who can't wait to shoot down "some Japs" and raises the ire of his superiors for being, well, cocky.    Like most of the characters in Midway, he's pretty easy to forget. 

After Pearl Harbor is attacked, military strategist Edwin Layton (Wilson), whose previous warnings about a pending attack by the Japanese fell on deaf ears, is commissioned by incoming Admiral Chester Nimitz (Harrelson) to figure out where the Japanese will attack next.   Through the use of eccentric code breakers stationed in a basement somewhere, Layton correctly predicts Midway Island in the Pacific would be the next target.   

Midway resembles Pearl Harbor in another way:   It depicts the Japanese as stoic, almost dispassionate players in their own war.    Yes, the movie even gives us the Japanese general ruefully reciting the famed line, "We've awoken a sleeping giant,"   That they did.    The Japanese would make far more despicable villains if they weren't presented as quiet, uninteresting, and sticklers for maintaining their honor in defeat.    Filmmakers take much more liberties with Nazis, thus at least making them villains whose demise we can actively root for.    The Japanese seem almost reticent in their imperialist designs.

Midway doesn't differentiate itself much from other movies about famed World War II battles.   Most of the battles take place in the air, so we see planes buzzing around, machine guns being fired as if there is infinite ammunition, and close-ups of the pilots shouting orders as if they will help us make sense of the action.   If you like airplanes lifting off from and landing on vast aircraft carriers, then this is your movie.   In the end, after the USA successfully prevents the island from falling into Japanese hands, we see celebrations and American brass hugging each other, while the Japanese commit ritualistic harikari.    We're happy for the Americans, I suppose, although we're not sufficiently moved.    It was a turning point in the war, but millions more will die before it's all over.