MID_D36_11971.NEF Image Credit: Reiner Bajo

Midway is so square, so old-school and old-fashioned, it almost feels avant-garde. Ambiguity is not its goal, nor is nihilism its motivating philosophy. It aims to celebrate heroism, sacrifice, determination and grit, and if you dont like that it really does not care.

Though its appearing some 70 years after the epochal Second World War battle it re-creates and more than 40 years after a Hollywood film with the same name on the same subject this Midway, as directed by Roland Emmerich and written by Wes Tooke, pays no attention to the notion that times have changed.

This is a film where men stand on top of bars when they have important speeches to make, where dialogue like thats the bravest damn thing Ive ever seen and lets take it upstairs to the old man is thick on the land, and an officer who neglects his wife to help fight the war promises he will spend the rest of my life making it up to her.

Though it is unlikely to win any awards for its words, Midway has two things going for it. Its based on the exploits of real men who did truly heroic things in a battle that changed the direction of the Pacific War, and it has Emmerichs gift for epic images.

A director best known for science fiction extravaganzas like Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow (though he also helmed the Revolutionary War historical drama The Patriot), Emmerich knows his way around stirring visuals.

Led by cinematographer Robby Baumgartner and production designer Kirk M Petruccelli, the Midway visual team managed to convincingly re-create nautical action, complete with swooping planes and massive aircraft carriers, on a soundstage surrounded by blue screen walls.

Although the 1976 Midway boasted many stars including Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, James Coburn, Glenn Ford, Robert Mitchum, Toshiro Mifune and more this years version takes a different tack.

The bigger stars on the marquee do cameos as Navy bigwigs (Woody Harrelson is Admiral Chester W Nimitz. Dennis Quaid is Admiral William Bull Halsey) while solid young actors including Ed Skrein, Patrick Wilson, Luke Evans, Nick Jonas and Mandy Moore carry the brunt of the dramatic action.

Also noteworthy is that the filmmakers have taken pains to present the Japanese in as even-handed a way as possible. In fact Midway begins with a 1937 heart-to-heart chat that starts in subtitled Japanese between Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (Etsushi Toyokawa) and Tokyo-stationed US Naval Intelligence officer Edwin Layton (Wilson).

Japan is at a crossroads, the admiral, whose life has been threatened for being too moderate, tells Layton. Dont push us into a corner.

Cut to 1941 December 7, to be exact where the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and, in particular, the sinking of the battleship USS Arizona are re-created with considerable oomph.

At sea nearby is the massive aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, home base to hot dog pilot Dick Best (Skrein), a gum-chewer from New Jersey whose gifts as an aviator are overshadowed by a hot-headed desire to throw caution about the Japanese fleet to the winds and put a 500-pound bomb down their smokestack as soon as possible.

While Best, aided by ever-understanding wife Ann (Moore), has to learn to moderate his temper to become a better leader of men, Layton, now stationed at Pearl, has to convince his dubious superiors he knows what hes talking about when he insists that the Japanese are up to something involving the tiny but strategic atoll known as Midway.

Though the exploits of the Navy pilots, particularly the remarkable ones of the real-life Best, are at the heart of Midway, the film also finds the space to include both submarine action and the raid on Tokyo led by Army Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle (Aaron Eckhart.)

In fact, in an attempt to convey multiple stories, Midway introduces so many characters it can be difficult to track who is who and hard to figure what the exact story of the battle is.

The fact that heroes were involved, however, is the one thing that does come through loud and clear, and that, Emmerich and company no doubt feel, is the thing that really counts.

Midway is now showing across the UAE.

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MID_D56_17754.NEF Image Credit: Reiner Bajo

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'Midway' review: Celebrating heroism with an epic | Movie-reviews - Gulf News