MIDNIGHT EAGLE Review

Strangely enough, watching MIDNIGHT EAGLE evoked a lot of memories of GODZILLA 1985, Johnnie To's EXILED, and John Wayne's epic THE SEARCHERS (if only because I watched it on AMC the other night). Like GODZILLA 1985, there are a lot of scenes of the Prime Minister of Japan meeting with his chiefs of staff and cabinet in a big conference room and watching the action on a large projection screen (natch). Obviously, however, there are no giant monsters wreaking havoc. As with EXILED, the actors usually emoted no further than mild concern that didn't capture the gravity of the situation. Like THE SEARCHERS, the protagonist isolates himself in vast, empty landscapes, this time being Japan's Northern Alps. Unfortunately, unlike THE SEARCHERS, the director does not have a photographer's knack for framing. There's no truly ugly shot per se, and the blizzard scenes always had interesting color and contrast. But the shots were always claustrophobic, focusing too closely on the actors. The camera is usually pointed downwards on the actors, so you don't get to appreciate the size of the mountains and how truly isolated they are. True, a blizzard limits visibility, but perhaps they could have done something like in 12 ANGRY MEN where as the protagonists venture further into the mountains, the blizzard gets worse and the camera angle changes to increase the claustrophobic feel. Then they go ahead and ruin the feeling of isolation when the PM has choppers flown in quickly, contradicting what he said earlier about the conditions being too bad.

If you think THE SEARCHERS, EXILED, and GODZILLA 1985 make for an odd mix, how about the nuclear thriller, family drama, and statement movie about wartime journalism, Japan's military, and relations with America?

The Midnight Eagle of the title is an American stealth bomber that is sabotaged by Northern agents and crashes in the Northern Alps of Japan. The agents mean to set off the nuclear bomb on board, which could eventually kill millions and turn Tokyo into a ghost town. There are many vague references to these agents being from North Korea, but you never hear (or see) Korea mentioned by name. Also strange, although free association with "stealth bomber" will yield "nuke" more often than not (enjoy the WMD pun?), it takes the protagonists an hour to figure out that there is actually a nuke on board, one of several examples of the movie dragging its feet. At any rate, the PM sends off a squad of Rangers from the Self-Defense Force to disarm the bomb. Meanwhile, a famous war photographer and his friend venture into the Alps to document the crisis, and the photographer's sister-in-law, also a journalist, investigates the people behind the attack. Gunfights, chase scenes, and family drama ensue.

The war photographer is the main protagonist, but his story is probably the least interesting. He's touted as someone who can find peace and beauty in the middle of terrible wars through his photos, but I never saw a photo that really made me understand his work. In STRANGER THAN FICTION, you hear the author narrating her own book, so you can understand why the book needs Harold Crick to die to work. Besides a photo of a starry sky, you never get a sense of what makes the man so special and why it's such a tragedy that he has stopped taking photographs and isolated himself in the mountains. And abandoning his dying wife and child because he's depressed does not help garner sympathy. The movie had a hard time making me care about any of what was going on.

You could have taken the nuclear bomb plot thread and purified that into a pretty entertaining action movie, but with three intertwining storylines, I found the movie bloated. Lots of things happen in the movie, but few things had a real emotional impact.