Review: 'Midway' turns the WW II battle into a cartoon

The first thing Roland Emmerich should do after his latest movie "Midway" hits theaters is apologize.

Apologize to the visual effects crew, the stuntmen, the carpenters, the costumers and artists. He has squandered their considerable visual skill in retelling the crucial World War II battle at Midway by melding some of the best action sequences in years with the most banal of words.

What's the point of scouring 1941 Navy regulations to ground the real-life characters in authentic military gear if they say stuff like this: "I guess every battle needs a miracle."

This image released by Lionsgate shows Ed Skrein, left, and Mandy Moore in a scene from "Midway." (Reiner BajoLionsgate via AP)

What's the point of locating the original blueprints of a gun, and then carefully recreating it, if the script calls for an airman to tell his pilot: "You fly like you don't care if we come home."

Emmerich has turned "Midway " into another of his films, "Independence Day," which was cartoony but worked because we knew it was over the top. Here, the director has taken real, living men who acted heroically and turned them into pulp comic strip characters. He might need to apologize to them the most.

Screenwriter Wes Tooke has apparently never seen a cliche he didn't want to embrace. His script is as textured and nuanced as an upbeat newsreel from the '40s. No, there's no young G.I nicknamed Brooklyn, but there are hotshot flyboys who stick their chewing gum next to a photo of their wives in the cockpit during dogfights.

This image released by Lionsgate shows Keean Johnson, left, and Ed Skrein in a scene from "Midway." (Reiner BajoLionsgate via AP)

Tooke's one-dimensional characters help the plot along by stating only the very obvious, like "If we lose, we lose the Pacific" and "This place is a powder keg." (Keep that last one in mind; stuff will blow up and it will be called foreshadowing.)

The Battle of Midway took place between June 4-7, 1942, and pitted Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, architect of the raid on Pearl Harbor, against U.S. Navy Adm. Chester Nimitz. The U.S. had been stung by the sneak attack in Hawaii and were underdogs in the Pacific.

But the U.S. Navy, having cracked Japan's code system, anticipated Japanese naval movements and gained the upper hand. The battle ended Japan's aspirations of naval dominance in the Pacific and showed the Allies that victory was possible.

This image released by Lionsgate shows Hiromoto Ida, left, and Hiroaki Shintani in a scene from "Midway." (Reiner BajoLionsgate via AP)

Like its cousin in WW II filmed failure, the Ben Affleck-led "Pearl Harbor," Emmerich has decided to tell this sprawling story using multiple characters, including showing the Japanese side. Hint: Everyone is brave.

In the actual battle theater are the brave, bad-boy bomber pilot Dick Best (Ed Skrein), the brave but more cautious Clarence Dickinson (Luke Kleintank), the downhome brave Admiral William "Bull" Halsey (Dennis Quaid), the swaggeringly brave Jimmy Doolittle (Aaron Eckhart) and the brave and cocksure Bruno Gaido (a mustachioed Nick Jonas, reaching the very limits of his acting skills).

You can instantly tell why these actors signed up. Jonas gets to shoot an anti-aircraft artillery gun at a plunging Japanese Zero and prove his courage. "That was the bravest damn thing I've ever seen. What's your name, son?" an awed officer says. Skrein, as Best, gets to be a daredevil pilot who is admired by everyone. "Men like Dick Best are the reason we're gonna win this war," says one awed pilot. Eckhart gets to strut about in a leather flying jacket and look awesome.

This image released by Lionsgate shows Ed Skrein, left, and Luke Kleintank in a scene from "Midway." (Reiner BajoLionsgate via AP)

Onshore there are the brave intelligence officer Edwin Layton (Patrick Wilson) and the brave outside-the-box Nimitz (Woody Harrelson). The Japanese are elegant, contained and brave, too, especially Yamamoto (Etsushi Toyokawa) and Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi (Tadanobu Asano).

Tooke has presumably met women in real life but really doesn't prove here that he knows how they think or speak at all. They, too, are brave — frustrated that their men are constantly working hard at saving democracy but understanding. (One nicely declares to her exhausted spouse: "I'll fix you a sandwich.") Mandy Moore, utterly wasted as Best's wife, says things like "I've never seen you this worried before" and "Come to bed." We're told she is a "firecracker."

Credit to Emmerich and his filmmakers for telling this battle from the air, ships and underwater (we get to see the staff of the USS Nautilus submarine) and the images are striking — gut-twisting bomber runs and pumping ammunition. But once again, even in the face of this cinematic and real-life triumph, the dialogue is paper thin.

This image released by Lionsgate shows Mandy Moore, left, and Ed Skrein in a scene from "Midway." (Reiner BajoLionsgate via AP)

"We did it!" says a pilot at the end, after they obviously did it. Another, dropping ordinance onto a Japanese carrier, states the obvious: "This is for Pearl." ''Midway" might be a film best watched if you switch off the volume.

"Midway," a Lionsgate release, is rated PG-13 for "sequences of war violence and related images, language and smoking." Running time: 138 minutes. One star out of four.

MPAA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

This image released by Lionsgate shows Luke Kleintank, foreground left, and Ed Skrein in a scene from "Midway." (Reiner BajoLionsgate via AP)

Online: https://midway.movie

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Ukrainian court on Friday ordered the detention of the country’s farm minister in the latest high-profile corruption investigation, while Kyiv security officials assessed how they can recover lost battlefield momentum in the war against Russia.

Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court ruled that Agriculture Minister Oleksandr Solskyi should be held in custody for 60 days, but he was released after paying bail of 75 million hryvnias ($1.77 million), a statement said.

Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau suspects Solskyi headed an organized crime group that between 2017 and 2021 unlawfully obtained land worth 291 million hryvnias ($6.85 million) and attempted to obtain other land worth 190 million hryvnias ($4.47 million).

Ukraine is trying to root out corruption that has long dogged the country. A dragnet over the past two years has seen Ukraine’s defense minister, top prosecutor, intelligence chief and other senior officials lose their jobs.

That has caused embarrassment and unease as Ukraine receives tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid to help fight Russia’s army, and the European Union and NATO have demanded widespread anti-graft measures before Kyiv can realize its ambition of joining the blocs.

In Ukraine's capital, doctors and ambulance crews evacuated patients from a children’s hospital on Friday after a video circulated online saying Russia planned to attack it.

Parents hefting bags of clothes, toys and food carried toddlers and led young children from the Kyiv City Children’s Hospital No. 1 on the outskirts of the city. Medics helped them into a fleet of waiting ambulances to be transported to other facilities.

In the video, a security official from Russian ally Belarus alleged that military personnel were based in the hospital. Kyiv city authorities said that the claim was “a lie and provocation.”

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that civic authorities were awaiting an assessment from security services before deciding when it was safe to reopen the hospital.

“We cannot risk the lives of our children,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to hold online talks Friday with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which has been the key international organization coordinating the delivery of weapons and other aid to Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said late Thursday that the meeting would discuss how to turn around Ukraine’s fortunes on the battlefield. The Kremlin’s forces have gained an edge over Kyiv’s army in recent months as Ukraine grappled with a shortage of ammunition and troops.

Russia, despite sustaining high losses, has been taking control of small settlements as part of its effort to drive deeper into eastern Ukraine after capturing the city of Avdiivka in February, the U.K. defense ministry said Friday.

It’s been slow going for the Kremlin’s troops in eastern Ukraine and is likely to stay that way, according to the Institute for the Study of War. However, the key hilltop town of Chasiv Yar is vulnerable to the Russian onslaught, which is using glide bombs — powerful Soviet-era weapons that were originally unguided but have been retrofitted with a navigational targeting system — that obliterate targets.

“Russian forces do pose a credible threat of seizing Chasiv Yar, although they may not be able to do so rapidly,” the Washington-based think tank said late Thursday.

It added that Russian commanders are likely seeking to advance as much as possible before the arrival in the coming weeks and months of new U.S. military aid, which was held up for six months by political differences in Congress.

While that U.S. help wasn’t forthcoming, Ukraine’s European partners didn’t pick up the slack, according to German’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which tracks Ukraine support.

“The European aid in recent months is nowhere near enough to fill the gap left by the lack of U.S. assistance, particularly in the area of ammunition and artillery shells,” it said in a report Thursday.

Ukraine is making a broad effort to take back the initiative in the war after more than two years of fighting. It plans to manufacture more of its own weapons in the future, and is clamping down on young people avoiding conscription, though it will take time to process and train any new recruits.

Jill Lawless contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Ukrainian young acting student Gleb Batonskiy plays piano in a public park in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)