The Battle For Midway (1999)
Film:
DVD:

Written by Donovan Reiff
Directed by Brian Breger & Peter Schnall
Narrated by Peter Coyote

Features:

• Bonus Program: Combat Cameramen
  
• Photo Gallery
  
• Interactive Battle Map
  
• U.S. and Japanese Battle Forces files and gallery
  
• Dr. Robert Ballard Biography
  
• Geographica Quiz
  
• Trailers for Search For the Battleship Bismarck, Secrets of the Titanic, & Untold Stories of WWII
  

Anamorphic: N/A; appears in its original 1.33:1 format.

My Advice: Rent It.

Midway turned around the war in the Pacific. Pearl Harbor had not been a cakewalk, and American forces were still hurting. Then the Japanese were coming in to try and put some salt in the wound. However, American forces did a surprise interception of the Japanese fleet in what became known as the Battle of Midway. The island of Midway itself was pounded (and so were American naval forces), but eventually (and miraculously) four Japanese carriers went under that day. The story of that battle is told in this docu, juxtaposed with the quest of Dr. Robert Ballard to find both the wreckage of the Japanese carrier Naga and the American carrier Yorktown. Along for the ride are a pair of veterans from each side of the conflict.

This film is capable enough, though it's probably the weakest of the National Geographic programs I've seen thus far. They did get my attention by bringing Ballard into play--you don't ask the guy who found the Titanic to the party if you plan on screwing around. However, the entire thing just plays out wrong. There's nothing worse than a documentary that tries to amp up the drama instead of just letting things happen as they do. If nothing exciting or even worth watching is happening, turn the camera off. Don't try to overplay your hand. I'm thinking specifically of when one attempt to find the Naga is made and fails. They treat this like it's the end of the freaking world and Ballard looks one step away from self-flagellation. Which is nuts, because they're just going to try again.

Because of this--namely that there's not a lot of exciting things happening during the search, except, well, poring over maps of the sea floor and sending down probes--the portion that discusses the battle feels like that kind of padding you used to do on essays in high school. You know, where you know you don't have but five pages of a ten-pager you have to write--so you start throwing in mildly related stuff to take up space? It's a shame, really.

A perfect example of how to let drama play out naturally comes with the bonus program on this disc: Combat Cameramen. I thought the National Geographic photogs were nutso. The footage and the stories that go into this short flick are nothing short of astounding. The photog who describes how he managed to capture the fall of Saigon springs to mind. It's not a program that's easy to watch, though. They show actual footage taken from a camera, still rolling, that fell out of the hands of a guy who got shelled. You get to see his colleagues attempt to drag him out of harm's way. Stunning, heart-wrenching stuff--especially when they talk to the people who walked into battle wielding nothing but a camera and remember their friends who did the same and never walked back out again.

Apart from that, this National Geographic title is fairly standard from them: the bonus program has no chapter stops, so it's a half-hour straight shot...which is a little annoying, although in this case it's less so because I can't imagine anybody being able to tear themselves away from it. The battle maps are good and in silhouette you have the major hardware that took part in the battles.

Like I said, the main program is fairly lacking in direction and steadiness--but the bonus program more than makes up for this. It's worth renting just to see Combat Cameramen. Only World War II completists, though, will want to add this to their collection.