“Midway,” released on Friday, Nov. 8, was just in the Atlas Atlantic Cinema last Thursday night. This is a World War II movie based on a “real account” of the battle of Midway (according to the beginning credits). As always, there will probably be spoilers ahead.

This movie starts out with a couple of U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers trying to make the Japanese-United States relationship a little less rocky. Obviously, it doesn’t work out quite well. One of the intelligence officers warns the U.S. the Japanese are probably going to attack, and boy do they. On Dec. 7, 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and sent the U.S. into a frenzy, which is understandable. The U.S. was neutral at the time, trying to stay out of a fight that didn’t need to include a country halfway across the world, but the Japanese unknowingly decided to “wake the beast.” 

This movie showed both the Japanese side and the American side to the story, which I thought was pretty cool. I also thought the filmmakers kind of portrayed some of the Japanese as not the sharpest tools in the shed. However, that could definitely just be me not completely understanding their culture, mixed with me not remembering the subtitles from when they were speaking in Japanese. When the filmmakers were portraying the Japanese side of the battle, they actually had actors speaking in Japanese. I really thought this was a nice touch to the flick, as it felt authentic and really helped set the scene.

Right before the credits, they showed what happened to all of the main characters real-life counterparts (all of the same name). For example, Richard “Dick” Best was one of the best naval (I think) pilots in history, but he never flew again after Midway because his lungs got messed up in the high altitudes, according to the movie. 

I thought this movie was pretty good. If you have a chance, watch it, because if you missed this movie, I think you missed being able to watch a piece of American history unfold.