Pulpmovies Reviews

Burned out war photographer, Yuji Nishizaki (Takao Osawa) is camping out in the mountains when he sees – and photographs – a plane crash. And then things get interesting…

As the film gets going, we are also introduced to Yuji’s sister in law, Keiko (Yuko Takeuchi) and Ochiai (Hiroshi Tamaki), both of whom happen to be journalists. Both of them sense a story brewing and Yuji quickly finds himself drawn into their investigations – especially in the case of Ochiai.

The story, as it emerges, is quite a major one, to say the lease. It turns out that some euphemistically referred to “Northern agents” have broken into a nearby Air Force base and sabotaged one of the American B52 bombers flying out of there. This is the plane that Yuji saw crash and it is carrying something that the Japanese government are both desperate to recover and very keen to keep from the public.

While Keiko finds herself investigating the incident at the US base, Ochiai manages to talk Yuji into going into the mountains with him to try and locate the crashed plane. And it’s in the mountains that the action gets going.

As well as the journalist and photographer, there are also two units from Japan’s self-defence force also trying to converge on the plane. And, to make matters difficult, the mountains are also heavily infiltrated with the aforementioned “Northern agents.”

The main problem that I had with Midnight Eagle is that the film seems to be quite uncertain as to whether it’s an action film or a conspiracy thriller. We do have a conspiracy, centring on what was on the crashed plane and why the Japanese government are so desperate not only to recover the plane, but also to keep the whole affair under wraps. But it’s not much of a conspiracy and figuring out what is going on is far from difficult which makes the reveal a bit of a let-down.

So on to the action and here the film suffers by being quite slow. The action sequences are competently done, but there is a limit to the number of ways that you can film a couple of men trudging through snowy mountains while avoiding various white-clad villains hiding in the snow. Consequently, we have a very high dialogue to action ratio.

Perversely, though, it’s in the dialogue that the film scores most strongly. There is a great deal of discussion in the film about Japan’s military and foreign policies and, while some of this probably does assume a greater understanding of the country’s politics than the average Westerner has, none of it is so intricate as to lose you and the broad themes are understandable to all.

There is also much said about the nature of journalistic integrity, the value of truth and – although not explored as fully as I’d have liked – the question of what happens when reporters uncover explosive secrets.

All of this comes together in a very powerful and genuinely moving climactic scene which very effectively pulls together the films themes of sacrifice and loyalty and which – on it’s own – makes Midnight Eagle a film well worth seeing.

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