Movies featuring famous historical battles will always draw an audience. This season one of America’s most pivotal Naval battles, the battle of Midway, is brought to film. As many of the timeless war films we love focus on authenticity and realism, Midway rushes to tell the story losing much of what draws audiences in to these films. Along with poor storytelling, audiences are served with mediocre acting from many familiar faces and some of the worst dialects ever put on film.

There aren’t many positive things to say about the acting in this film. To lead with the stronger performance, Patrick Wilson (Edwin Layton) plays a Naval intelligence officer well. In a war that is considered to have one of the worst intelligence blunders in American history, Wilson carries that weight and highlights the redemption of that division. Dennis Quaid (William “Bull” Halsey) does a good job of playing an old ship commander and fit into his character well. Woody Harrelson (Chester W. Nimitz) plays one of the most important men in Naval history, and although his performance wasn’t bad, it did not portray the importance his character had in the war. Mandy Moore (Ann Best) plays the wife of a pilot and although her performance was adequate, her role was unimportant and not featured often. Luke Kleintank (Clarence Dickinson) plays a country fighter pilot and gives the strongest of the pilot performances, however that bar is set very low. In a movie that features some of the worst 1940’s accents on film, his was tolerable. Which leaves us Ed Skrein (Dick Best). Skrein has the worst American accent in a featured film. It becomes distracting at times and takes away from the story being told. He also acts with an arrogance that is hard to tolerate, even when his character is meant to be arrogant. His performance is not to blame for the films failures, but it contributed to it greatly.

There is so much wrong with Midway that it overshadowed the things the film did well. A war movie shot majorly in front of green screens, it was still able to produce some decent cinematography. Battle scenes were enjoyable, but border unrealistic. The amount of bullets dodged by fighter pilots makes audiences feel as if luck plays into war more than training or skill. Midway also tries to tell too many stories in one film. You are constantly being introduced to new characters and situations so that you never get tied to any of them. It is hard to make an almost 3 hour movie feel rushed but Midway was able to pull that off. For historical purposes Midway does a good service. If you knew nothing about a battle that defended our coasts and shifted the advantage of WWII, then Midway does the job of being informative. What the film lacks is any emotion that grabs an audience and ties them into the era and story, which is sad because there was opportunity there and now we may have to wait another generation for this battle to be properly represented.