I was pleasantly surprised by MIDWAY

The film that I had been looking forward to since last year was released this Autumn in Japan.

It’s MIDWAY, the U.S. film.

It was released in the U.S. last year, but it was not distributed in Japan at that time.

So I had waited for more than a year to see it.

I’ll write about my impression about MIDWAY this time.

I had heard that it was a film based on the historical fact of the battle of Midway in World War Ⅱ.

It got my attention.

Midway is the name of an atoll that comprises some islands in the North Pacific.

The fierce battlefield between Japan and the U.S. located on Midway Atoll.

The battle scene was generated by compositing an actually real video with a CG. It was so well-done that I mistook it for the real battle.

Furthermore, this film was fast-paced.

So I finished watching this film without being bored.

But if you don’t have any knowledge of the battle of Midway, just watching the film will not be enough to understand why the U.S. was able to win this battle.

I thought the factors that determined the outcome of the battle should be described more carefully in the film.

The fast-paced development on the film backfired at this point.

As a historical fact, each judgement made by the U.S. and Japan in the battle and the effects of these were very interesting.

I have a high opinion of the side characters who play Japanese people in this film.

“Japanese people” in most foreign films seem strange from a native Japanese point of view.

Their on-screen lifestyles also look strange.

So they don’t look like real Japanese people even though they appear identical.

However, I was pleasantly surprised by MIDWAY.

There was nothing strange about the side characters who play Japanese people. This showed that the director pursued reality in every detail.

It was more incredible than I had expected.

On the whole, I formed a good impression of this film.

The director depicted the realities of war based on historical fact on neutral ground.

That led to me gaining an appreciation of the miseries of the war.

Many people became victims of war.

Many soldiers, both in the U.S. and Japan, were lost in battle. Most of them were young, and their families must have been waiting for them to return alive.

It breaks my heart just thinking about it.

Like me, the director must have felt this too.

I felt his heartfelt condlence for all the war dead regardless of nationality through the film.

We must never forget the miseries of war.