Year Released: 2019
Directed by: Roland Emmerich
Starring: Ed Skrein, Luke Evans, Woody Harrelson, Dennis Quaid, Aaron Eckhart, Nick Jonas, Mandy Moore
(PG-13, 138 min.)
Genre: Action and Adventure, Drama

“If we lose, the Japanese own the west coast. Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, will burn.” Lt. Dick Best

Go with the people and not the critics on this one, except of course, this savvy one, Different Drummer, who loved Midway from start to finish.

Just six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, this clash between the American fleet and the Imperial Japanese Navy marked a pivotal turning point in the Pacific Theater during the war. The film is the ultimate underdog story and features an all-star cast—from Luke Evans and Aaron Eckhart to Nick Jonas and Mandy Moore. Woody Harrelson and Dennis Quaid also play the legendary Navy Admirals Nimitz and William "Bull" Halsey.

Midway has all those old fashioned values still secretly cherished by the movie going public, who gave the film a 92% thumbs up versus the caterwauling critics, who rated it a measly 42%. Too much courage, patriotism, “toxic” masculinity, and American bravado for the nuance crowd, who seem much more comfortable hailing films about America’s lost wars than the ones we actually won.

In fact, the film illustrates exactly why this former English teacher started her website some 14 years ago. Different Drummer, like Thoreau, felt out of step with the current drumbeats of the movie review band. Some of the films they disdained, she enjoyed with guilty pleasure, and though she might not admit it to some “intellectual” friends, the ones the young critics raved about often left her either cold, disgusted or both.

***

Some of the best and most popular war films of late have offered a somewhat inverted perspective. Clint Eastwood’s compelling Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) is told from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers awaiting the inevitable American invasion of the island, giving us this epic World War II battle from the inside out.

Still taking risks, Eastwood also directed the controversial American Sniper (2014) about real life soldier Chris Kyle. Defending his role as a military assassin, Kyle said, “I didn’t risk my life to bring democracy to Iraq. I risked my life for my buddies, to protect my friends and fellow countrymen.” And that film burned the box office down.

Not to mention Mel Gibson’s superb Hacksaw Ridge (2016), the story of Desmond Doss, the only conscientious objector ever to win a Congressional Medal of Honor. He volunteers to serve, but will not even touch a gun.

And finally Christopher Nolan’s 2017 Dunkirk is unconventional in every way. First of all, it is not a winning battle for the English and their Allies. In fact, it is not a battle at all, but a retreat and evacuation, which nevertheless, has the heroics of the greatest battles of all.

Each of these films concentrates on a single person or a select small group with lots of character development.

Not quite so with Midway, which takes a more traditional overview of the whole Pacific theater with its great cast members reduced to being superb pieces of the puzzle. Rather than decrying that, as some critics have, Different Drummer sees it as reality. President Roosevelt, as well as the army and the navy, had to stage a comeback after the disastrous Pearl Harbor Attack, “the greatest intelligence failure in American history,” at least at that time.

For some perspective on the film versus real events, Different Drummer has watched the “Midway" episode from the latest Netflix Greatest Events of the WWII in Colour, which mixes real war footage with commentary from current military experts worldwide. Emmerich’s Midway film is pretty close to that history, right down to the robe and slippers worn by the genius code analyst Joseph Rochefort, who had to convince Admiral Nimitz, the new commander of the Pacific fleet, as well as a reluctant Washington that the Japanese were planning an attack on Midway, a tiny but strategically important island nearly halfway between Asia and North America. It was home to a U.S. Naval air station.

In Midway, Rochefort (Brennan Brown) has no hard data, but he is able to get Nimitz on his side. *Nimitz, by the way, is played to perfection by Woody Harrelson, whom we normally see playing goofballs (“Cheers”) and psychos (Natural Born Killers).

Rochefort explains it something like this:

It’s kind of like sorting out clues, let’s say for a wedding. You see a large amount of flowers are going to a certain address. A there are several out of town reservations at the nearby hotels. Then the catering trucks are booked for that address, too. You haven’t been invited to the wedding, but you are pretty sure when are where it will be.

Washington is not so easily convinced, but I will not give away the little ruse Rochefort uses to convince them. You will have to see the film to find that out.

***

The film gives a somewhat balanced portrayal of the Japanese commanders, too. We see the rivalry between Admiral Yamamoto and the competent but by-the-book Vice Admiral Nagumo. Yamamoto originally is reluctant to challenge the United States, which he saw had a population and industrial advantage over his country. He purportedly said after Pearl Harbor,

“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

And Nagumo’s caution and lack of flexibility is ultimately his undoing.

Both veteran actors Harrelson as the cordial and optimistic Nimitz (* see the notes and article below) and Dennis Quaid as the affable curmudgeon Vice Admiral “Bull” Halsey are so charismatic and well known historically that they don’t need oodles of screen time to establish their bonafides.

Aaron Eckhart has a cameo as Army Lt. Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, his raid portrayed as President Roosevelt’s war morale medicine rather than any actual military strategy. But that does not undercut the pilots’ outsized courage on this this mission of no return. Heck, even starting off is iffy. The sailors on board the aircraft carriers from which Doolittle’s heavily laden bombers take off even take wagers on whether they will get airborne or not. They do, of course, but barely.

The Welsh born Luke Evans, now an American item in such films as Clash of the Titans, The Girl on the Train, and Beauty and the Beast, plays Lt. Commander Wade McClusky, who actually is the one who spots what turns out to be a Japanese destroyer just as his planes are about to give up on finding the enemy fleet. According to the Netflix documentary, he turns his plane around to follow the Japanese destroyer, knowing he may not have enough fuel to get back to his ship. To their credit, his men follow instinctively. It is McClusky’s decision that changes the battle miraculously in our favor.

But in the Midway film, the character we focus on the most, the one we see close up and personal is Lt. Richard “Dick”Best , Executive Officer of the Bombing Squadron Six on the USS Enterprise. He is played by Edward Skrein, and English actor and rapper, probably best known for the lead villain Ajax in the blockbuster film Deadpool. Skrein’s Best is clearly a cocky son of a gun, and one critic even complained about his “thuggish” looks, but to this critic, his off center looks go right along with his character. He is someone who seems to challenge death, so focused on his mission that he doesn’t seem to care whether he is coming back or not, even though his wife is gorgeous as well as loving and supportive, and he, of course, adores her and their beautiful daughter.

Lt. Dick Best: I don’t know how to lead these men.
Anne Best: They’ll follow you anywhere.

The footage from the cockpit point of view as they dive bomb the Japanese – anti aircraft guns and enemy fighters in their superior planes wreaking death and havoc in a hell storm around them – makes you realize these pilots’ courage and and yes, desperation. We are losing the war badly at this time. The Pacific is just one battle away from being lost entirely.

That’s why we called them the greatest generation, pals. This war and the Depression before that shaped them. They didn’t complain. They just did their duty, and more than you can even imagine died, and died valiantly. This is the world my parents lived through, my father miraculously returning from the awful fighting around Okinawa and Iwo Jima.

As I watched this film, I could not help but think how much more I identify with these people, clearly a generation before me, rather than the soft, privileged, and complaining ones who now seem to surround us.

I am not worthy to lick their boots, but I find it an honor to have known them in my parents, uncles, aunts, and neighbors in the little village of Oak Park, Illinois where I grew up.

A few live on, but most have gone before us. The last of Doolittle’s raiders died this last year.

Honor them as you go to Midway and have pity on the effete critics who feel compelled to mock military service and patriotism, let alone understand the quality of these men and women who sacrificed to give them their ease.

***

*Things get a little personal with both Harrelson and Nimitz. In truth, Harrelson’s father, a contract killer, murdered the father of one of my high school students. He also played Maney Gault in Netflix’s The Highwaymen, one of the two Texas rangers who took out Bonnie and Clyde. Frank Hamer actually lived in a house just across the alley from me, now owned by good friends. Maney Gaults also lived in Travis Heights a few blocks away.

As to Nimitz, I am very familiar with his birthplace, Fredericksburg, Texas, as we often spend time in this hill country town some 70 miles from Austin. My husband and I have spent many hours at the Admiral Nimitz Museum, built on the onetime Nimitz hotel where Admiral Nimitz was born and raised in the late 1800s.

Featured below our recipe is what Nimitz explains are the Three Blessings of Pearl Harbor

–Kathy Borich
🥁🥁🥁🥁1/2

Trailer

Film-Loving Foodie

Different Drummer has chosen what she calls The Good Neighbor Classic Daiquiri to go along with this terrific World War II film. And no, it has nothing to do with the Wonderful Mr. Rogers lately lauded in a documentary and soon to be portrayed by everybody’s American favorite, Tom Hanks. Here is the story behind the name.

What goes with a high-flying film celebrating heroic feats of fortitude? A classic daiquiri, of course. You see, wartime rationing made most booze hard to come by, yet because of Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy (which opened up trade and travel relations with Latin America, Cuba and the Caribbean), rum was easily obtainable. So during World War II, rum-based drinks (once frowned upon as being the domain of sailors and bums), became extremely fashionable. And the nice thing about the cocktail is it's more of an equation than a recipe. –Valetmag.com

o 2 parts light rum

o 1 part lime juice

o 2 tsp sugar (or simple syrup)

Pour into a shaker with ice, shake until well-chilled and strain into a coupe glass.

“Admiral Nimitz on the Blessings of Pearl Harbor” – Keith Parks of Sun City, AZ

Admiral Nimitz flew to Hawaii to assume command of the Pacific Fleet. He landed at Pearl Harbor on Christmas Eve 1941. There was such a spirit of despair, dejection and defeat you would have thought the Japanese had already won the war.

On Christmas Day 1941, Admiral Nimitz was given a boat tour of the destruction wrought on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. Big sunken battleships and Navy vessels cluttered the waters everywhere you looked. As the tour boat returned to dock, the young helmsman of the boat asked, "Well, Admiral, what do you think after seeing all this destruction?"

Admiral Nimitz's reply shocked everyone within the sound of his voice. Admiral Nimitz said, "The Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could ever make, or God was taking care of America. Which do you think it was?"

Shocked and surprised, the young helmsman asked, "What do you mean by saying the Japanese made the three biggest mistakes an attack force ever made?"

Nimitz explained. Mistake number one: the Japanese attacked on Sunday morning. Nine out of every ten crewmen of those ships were ashore on leave. If those same ships had been lured to sea and sunk, we would have lost 38,000 men instead of 3,800.

Mistake number two: when the Japanese saw all those battleships lined in a row, they got so carried away sinking those battleships they never once bombed our dry docks opposite those ships. If they had destroyed our dry docks, we would have had to tow every one of those ships to America to be repaired. As it is now, the ships are in shallow water and can be raised. One tug can pull them over to the dry docks, and we can have them repaired and at sea by the time we could have towed them to America. And I already have crews ashore anxious to man those ships.

Mistake number three: Every drop of fuel in the Pacific theater of war is on top of the ground in storage tanks five miles away over that hill. One attack plane could have strafed those tanks and destroyed our fuel supply. That's why I say the Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could make, or God was taking care of America.

I've never forgotten what I read in that little book. It is still an inspiration as I reflect upon it. In jest, I might suggest that because Admiral Nimitz was a Texan, born and raised in Fredricksburg, he was a born optimist. But anyway you look at it, Admiral Nimitz was able to see a silver lining in a situation and circumstance where everyone else saw only despair and defeatism. President Roosevelt had chosen the right man for the right job. We desperately needed a leader who could see silver linings in the midst of the clouds of dejection, despair and defeat. There is a reason that our national motto is, "In God we trust."