Midway (1976) on Netflix
PG19762h 12mActionDramaHistory
A bombing raid on Tokyo stuns Japan, and Admiral Yamamoto wins approval to invade Midway Island. Captain Matt Garth, at Pearl Harbor, is asked to judge how far American intelligence has come.
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- IMDb6.8/1023,606 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes41%
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Plot summary
A bombing raid on Tokyo in April 1942 unsettles Japan's naval command. Admiral Yamamoto, convinced the American Pacific Fleet threatens the Japanese home islands, wins approval for a plan to invade Midway Island and draw the American fleet into a fight. Admirals Nagumo and Yamaguchi lead the Japanese carrier forces, with Admiral Kondo commanding the amphibious invasion. Captain Matt Garth is sent to assess the progress of American intelligence gathering at Pearl Harbor, while Commander Joseph Rochefort's staff works to read Japanese Navy communications that name an upcoming target only as AF. Garth's son Tom, a naval aviator, asks his father to help free Haruko Sakura, his American-born girlfriend, from internment.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Midway (1976)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Fonda was astonished to learn that Yamamoto and Nimitz were both missing fingers from accidents, so he consciously folded a finger back throughout his performance, while Mifune had his uniforms and gloves made to be as accurate as possible.
- Toshiro Mifune had reportedly been scheduled to play Yamamoto in Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), but he withdrew from that production when director Akira Kurosawa left the project.
- Toshiro Mifune had his script vetted for historical accuracy before filming, sending it to Minoru Genda and to Yamamoto's son so that they could attest that it was right.
- Rather than staging new battles, the filmmakers reused footage from earlier films: most of the Japanese air raids on Midway are stock shots from Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), some scenes come from a 1960 Japanese Toho film that also starred Mifune, several action scenes from Away All Boats (1956), and the opening Doolittle raid on Tokyo from Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944).
- Midway was the second of only four films ever released with a Sensurround sound mix, which required special speakers to be installed in cinemas. The other three were Earthquake (1974), Rollercoaster (1977) and Battlestar Galactica (1978).
- Captain Matt Garth's contribution to planning the battle was based loosely on the actual work of Lieutenant-Commander Edwin Layton, the Pacific fleet intelligence officer who spoke Japanese and was key to turning raw cryptography output into meaningful intelligence for Nimitz and his staff.
- The US Navy Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Lexington played the part of both the American and the Japanese flattops in the film's shipboard scenes.
