Midway

[jimtranr]

Originally Posted by Antonmb

Finally saw this last night - a mixed bag for me: the “hero” acting and dialog were pretty cheesy and over the top at times, but the action sequences were excellent.

Pretty much agree. It's more accurate than the 1976 film, in that there was no "Matt Garth" (a character based very loosely on LCDR Edwin Layton, who, as the current film correctly portrays, was at Pearl during the action).

But it was distracting to see shots of Japanese carriers, whose islands were on the starboard side, making turns hard to starboard with their islands on the port side. (Picky, I know, but I'm a bit sensitive to such detail, having plane-guarded carriers while conning USS Turner Joy in 1964 and nearly being run over by USS Ticonderoga at night when she signaled a port turn and then came hard to starboard at 28 knots.)

Overall, despite the by-necessity excess of CGI, the occasionally less-than-stellar dialog, and the easy-to-spot technical goofs, I think the current film gives a better sense, most particularly in the grit-your-teeth flak-punctuated dive-bombing sequences, of what it must have been like for the actual participants at Midway than the star-studded 1976 version.