Search - Midway [Widescreen] on DVD

MPAA Rating: PG Content Advisory: Suitable for Children, Adult Language, War Violence Movie Release: 1976 DVD Release: 08/05/1998 Format: DVD - Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV Audio Tracks: English Subtitles: English SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 2 hrs 11 mins Studio: Universal Studios Members Wishing: 8 Genres: War, Combat Films, War Epic See Also: Midway [Widescreen]

An expensive war epic, Midway emulates The Longest Day and Tora! Tora! Tora! in attempting to re-create a famous World War II battle from both the American and Japanese viewpoints. The 1942 battle of Midway was the turning point of the War in the Pacific; the Japanese invasion fleet was destroyed, and America's string of humiliating defeats was finally broken. Though the battle itself was sufficiently dramatic to fill two films, Midway also has plotline involving the mixed-race relationship between Ensign Garth (Edward Albert), son of Navy Captain Matt Garth (Charlton Heston), and Haruko Sakura (Christina Kokubo), a Hawaiian girl of Japanese descent. The real-life personages depicted herein include American Admirals Nimitz (Henry Fonda), Halsey (Robert Mitchum) and Spruance (Glenn Ford), and Japanese Admiral Yamamoto (Toshiro Mifune, his voice once again dubbed by Paul Frees, whom Mifune personally selected for the job). For its original road show release, Midway was offered in the "Sensurround" process, which electronically shook and vibrated the audience's chairs during the battle sequences. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Charlton Heston - Capt. Matt Garth
Henry Fonda - Adm. Chester W. Nimitz
James Coburn - Capt. Vinton Maddox
Glenn Ford - Rear Adm. Raymond A. Spruance
Hal Holbrook - Cmdr. Joseph Rochefort

Midway was a good idea for a movie that, at least in its feature film release, was very poorly executed. The notion probably didn't seem bad -- take newsreel footage, shots from old Hollywood films, and integrate a story about a past event with a current all-star cast. Irwin Allen, who'd broken box office records around the world with The Poseidon Adventure, had been doing it for years on television and in movies, He had become a respected producer, and Universal had practically secured the patent on all-star blockbusters at the dawn of the 1970s with Airport. The problem was that, apart from a handful of performances, everyone in the film is so straitjacketed by their roles that they're mostly left parroting hopeless war movie cliches. Henry Fonda, Glenn Ford, and Hal Holbrook do well enough, but the rest of the big-name cast is practically sleepwalking. The "drama" surrounding Charlton Heston in the theatrical version of the film (the one on this DVD) is a pale rewrite of the John Wayne/Brandon de Wilde subplot from In Harm's Way, with a racial/romantic twist included. Between trying to recreate events spread over an entire ocean and four months of interlocking decisions, Midway comes off as virtually a TV movie when compared to In Harm's Way. Even John Williams' score is laden with little musical clichés. Ironically, there is a better version of this film -- the network television cut, which includes ten minutes of footage from the Battle of the Coral Sea (which takes place offscreen in this version) and a performance-enhancing romantic subplot for Heston's character (a totally fictional officer) and that of Susan Sullivan (which appears nowhere in this edition). The only thing that saves the shorter version of the film is the import of the subject itself -- the film offers a good measure of suspense once the Japanese launch their planes; the pacing picks up, and the plot rests with those planes rather than with the actors. The DVD itself is a decent job. The 2.35 aspect ratio preserves the Panavision theatrical image, and the sound even in the dramatic scenes is not only loud (though the original release's "Sensurround" is nowhere in evidence), but has a pleasing dimensionality about it. The image quality is excellent, and only the relative blandness of the military aircraft keeps this from being one of the easier-on-the-eye blockbusters of its period. The clarity of the image is a major drawback in one respect, because it is amazingly easy to spot the footage lifted from Tora! Tora! Tora! and inserted into scenes of the attack on Midway's air field. No trailer or any other special features are present, and the movie starts automatically unless one goes to the menu, which is lively enough, with boxes containing moving images from the relevant opening scenes of each chapter. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide