NPR

A Middling 'Midway'

Roland Emmerich's CGI-heavy depiction of the WWII battle that turned the tide in the Pacific isn't boring, but it's familiar beats ensure it's more a movie about war movies than it is about war.
Dick (Ed Skrein, left) and Ann (Mandy Moore, right) part ways in <em>Midway</em>.

The 1942 victory the U.S. Navy won against a numerically superior Japanese force at Midway Atoll was fresher in memory to the audiences that made the Technicolor-Sensurround sensation a hit in the bicentennial summer of 1976 than that hokey movie is to us now. The three-day battle by air and by sea was such a tide-turning triumph for the United States that it's surprising there have only been three movies named for it in 75 years. The first was an 18-minute documentary shot by Hollywood legend John Ford, who took some shrapnel in his arm while filming what historian Mark Harris

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