It uses a combination of practical footage (like Christopher Nolan did with Dunkirk), a ton of cleaned-up WWII archival footage, and a sprinkle of special effects with miniatures. Overall, it looks pretty good.

The "cast of thousands" is front-loaded with some old school screen legends, plus many who went on to become TV stars (Tom Selleck, Erik Estrada, Dabney Coleman).

The film slowly builds up momentum, the way other war films of the time like "A Bridge Too Far" did. It takes over an hour for the Battle Of Midway itself to begin, putting all the pieces into place, and historically it was a painstaking process, so many things had to happen for the battle to start and unfold the way it did.

And unlike so many more recent films of the genre, there isn't any fictional personal drama nor romantic subplots. It's long enough as it already is, telling a grand sweeping story.

Very much a product of its' time, yes I'd definitely recommend it, although I prefer that leisurely pace of 70s films, it's a matter of personal taste, maybe because growing up with those kinds of films.

It is solid if you enjoy that genre.

It's about 100x better than the Michael Bay version, but that's still not saying much. Yes, it's a good movie for its era. If you watch it today then you'll need to be a little generous about the movie style, since we've come a long way since then.

From the looks of another comment down the thread, there's gonna be quite a bit of people like me, who get Emmerich and Bay mixed up.

The bombastic, clumsily unrealistic abuse of CGI might fit fantasy or disaster movies, but it is positively jarring in a war movie, which requires a more sober or constrained style of direction. WWII physics of motion shouldn't look like a fucking video game on the large screen, not even the dogfights.

And let's not even get started on the rote and clichéd emotional ~~palate~~ palette in the romantic subplots.

EDIT: a word