The summer of 1942 brought Naval stalemate to the Pacific as the American and Japanese fleets stood at even numbers each waiting for the other to begin a renewed offensive. "Midway" tells the story of this historic June battle where a Japanese carrier force, in an attempt to occupy Midway island and lure the American fleet to destruction, was meet valiently by US forces operating off of three aircraft carriers and numerous escort ships. It was the first battle in which naval air power was extensivly used, and at its conclusion the Japanese Carrier force had been completly destroyed which lead the way for the US 1943 and 44 offensives which would eventually bring the Pacific War to a close. The 1942 battles of the Coral Sea and Midway island are retold through the points of view of both sides. When an audacious US air raid reaches Japan itself, Combined Fleet commander Isoroku Yamamoto orders seaborne invasions of Port Moresby in the southwestern Pacific and of Midway Island near Hawaii, invasions that Yamamoto hopes will smoke out the US Pacific Fleet for destruction before the full might of US war production can kick in. The Japanese are supremely confident of victory over the vastly outnumbered US fleet, but they are unaware that US Navy intelligence has cracked the Imperial Navy's codes, allowing the US to deploy aircraft carriers to maximum counteroffensive effect. I know I WILL catch flack for this, but this was just bad. They used footage from other films, and I think this started the love story in war movies theme. The Japanese spoke perfect English…in Tora! Tora! Tora! I loved the sub titles… they conveyed so much more about the actual speaking and history of Japanese, in my opinion. I have this movie, just cause I am war movie fanatic, but I don't watch it. The couple of times I have seen it, I am set for life. Tora! Tora! Tora!, The Longest Day, hell even Where Eagles Dare, are much better movies. Just was a very weak movie. Check out Airforce or Wake Island. The Sands of Iwo Jima….and yes I am looking forward to seeing the movie, Flag Of Our Fathers. Especially to this movie, there are three possible general points of view from which it can be 'judged' or simply absorbed emotionally and intellectually while watching it.<br/><br/>I prefer to call that chewing on the pieces of propaganda America's distorted image of what happens here on earth throws on the ground before us, as if we were dogs like those poor scorched jap and us soldiers - Lancaster, for once here, was really disappointing, he could have spent a lot more time with his injured son, instead of ever being present on the stupid bridge - but then again, a modern possible version of this movie or any scene like that, where big war competes with personal, private, emotional issues, would have in the contrary put much too much weight on the emotional - this is the strong side of the movie: Although fully a propaganda, as if to calm America down after Pearl Harbour, even only from the historical eye of the Fifties and Sixties, this movie succeeds in showing some strategic truth, really well-combined with the personal feelings of each character, BUT: On this point, as I said, where war and emotion meet, it immensely fails to achieve our moral and ethical standard of today, which might be spoiled, but the solution, also for a movie, is NOT to put more weight on the issue of big war than on personal emotions, but to realize those two issues are deeply related, out of which this movie makes a mockery.<br/><br/>Never are we made aware that the individual is trapped between patriotism and its own conscience - the movie is forbidden to show this, because it is a definite try to delude our view of the political truth, which is that America is all but the hero of the world, even if the Japs were in fact poisoned and really infected with nothing else but fascism, at that time - America went so hard on Japan because Japan was too strong an ECONOMICAL opponent rather than only a war enemy - war or peace and business always go along together in our corrupt system of international relations.<br/><br/>In the two categories 'strategy' and 'emotion', I would give this movie full support and only the best notes, whereas in the third and most important one, the political objectiveness and frankness of the movie, it fails so badly, that I can hardly tell how much and at what many, so many times it lies, lies, and lies again.<br/><br/>That Fonda agreed to demonstrate such American chauvinism, probably really desperately needed both the fame and the money the job got him. Sad. But I do enjoyed this movie, you just got to cut out the whole view it wants to indoctrinate you with.<br/><br/>So I'm feeling now quite a most tiny bit like Kramer from 'Seinfeld', when he popped out of his hiding cave (his apartment), only to say "Hey, I just watched 'Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo'!"
Gaylynek replied
345 weeks ago