This overlooked 2019 World War II movie is now on Netflix. Here’s why you should stream it

If you’re scrolling through the most popular titles on Netflix, you might notice that the streamer has a way of giving movies a second life. While many of the most popular titles are Netflix originals, there are also titles that you may not have heard of but were released in theaters just a few years ago.

One such title worth checking out, especially if you’re into war movies, is Midway. The film tells the story of the Battle of Midway from the American perspective, following a group of soldiers as they prepare for the battle in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Here are four reasons you should check it out.

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It’s got big Top Gun energy

Top Gun is set decades after Midway, and its sequel is set even further in the future. Even so, Midway has many of the same trappings as those movies, even if it’s about something with much firmer historical stakes. This is a movie primarily about a bunch of men doing something insane together, and finding camaraderie among themselves.

If you liked the flying sequences in Top Gun or Top Gun: Maverick and wished there were more of that in modern moviemaking, then Midway is the perfect place to start. It’s got all the aerial battles you could want and then some.

It stars a bunch of great dudes

Lionsgate

Like Top Gun, much of the reason Midway is worth seeing is that it’s filled with interesting male actors. Woody Harrelson, Luke Evans, Dennis Quaid, Aaron Eckhart, and Patrick Wilson all make up the movie’s supporting cast, and each of them takes what could be a relatively straightforward role and finds something interesting to do with it.

None of these actors ever quite made it to the A-list, and that’s part of the reason they feel so believable as actual fighter pilots headed out into an insanely dangerous battle.

Director Roland Emmerich has a peerless sense of scale

Universal

Roland Emmerich probably isn’t going to win an Oscar any time soon, but it’s impossible to deny that the man knows exactly how to use a massive budget. To his immense credit, the aerial sequences in this movie have a clear sense of geography, and the explosions have a tactility that can feel lacking in many major blockbusters.

Midway is a very harrowing true story, and Emmerich knows how to give the action sequences real weight, even if the script doesn’t quite live up to those action beats. If you came to Midway, though, you likely came for the action.

It hasn’t been done to death

Lionsgate

Perhaps the most underrated reason Midway is worth a watch is that it’s telling a story that hasn’t been told to death. The European theater has always been the more popular setting for movies set during World War II, and there are plenty of movies that do just that.

Midway is set in the Pacific, and it also focuses on troops who did their fighting in a cockpit instead of on the ground. That combination makes it feel like a breath of fresh air, and also an important reminder that soldiers lived a wide variety of different kinds of lives as they battled through the war.

Midway is streaming on Netflix.