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ORIGINAL: Big B
What the film is NOT is a realistic portrayal of WW2 aerial combat - as I said above...it features modern over-the-top action scenes that seems to be today's norm unfortunately.
But the film is far better than it's combat scenes, and frankly I'm surprised these days that a story like this can still be made today.
It's also Not a "woke" film thank God... no angst over modern sensibilities of Hollywood.
Unfortunately it still includes the mythical Yamamoto "sleeping giant" statement.

It's worth seeing...

This is heartening to hear. The idea that anyone should expect a depiction of warfare that contains high fidelity to reality is a bit...well...unrealistic. It simply makes little theatrical sense and most of the audience with not appreciate it and, even worse, perhaps find it boring. The more important thing, as you state, is the film beyond its combat scenes. What kind of story it tells and how well it does so. If BigB thinks its worth seeing, I'll look forward to seeing it this weekend.

Saw it with two others and we all three were very disappointed in the movie. There was a lack of details about the amazing things that actually happened leaving no sense of those amazing things in the audience. It also just looked like a hollywood movie and not a historical one. If we wanted to see action shots of CGI bombs dropping or CGI aircraft supposedly shooting, then we would have gone to a fictional movie. The purpose of going to a movie of a battle is to get a sense of the historical battle. Otherwise, just make the movie about a fictional battle.

ORIGINAL: GaryChildress

I was scrolling through reviews of the movie and came across this: https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/ ... at-midway/

This is about as scathing as a review can get I think. Interesting.

It's over the top polemic-to-be-funny. Not a real review IMO.

What saddens me about war movies in general and obviously about this one as well, is that things happen in history that are unbelievable, or at best, amazing yet that's never enough. Such as in this battle, the US sinking four Japanese CVs. That story unto itself should be enough to make a good movie. I think back to Tora Tora Tora that made an amazing attempt at realism coupled with "natural" drama, and there was plenty of that leading up to the attack. There was no love sick side story or other distractions (to some I guess the word would be "attractions"!) but an adherence to the facts as they were known at the time (1970?). Today however nothing in reality is attractive enough to portray through an honest attempt at realism, it has to be jazzed up. As some have said in this thread, the producers need to "Star Wars" it up (which by the way is another problem, there is NO sound in space, it's a vacuum, again go back to an earlier era, this time 1968 "2001" for some realism that was seen by some as gripping). But I guess it's not worth it unless it makes LOTS of money and to do that you need to give what the vast majority of viewers want, the whole WHIZZ BANG style of movie! Sigh. Sorry, just venting.