Flyboys Review
by Mark R. Leeper (mleeper AT optonline DOT net)September 30th, 2006
FLYBOYS
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: This story of the men in the Lafayette
Escadrille does a lot that is historically accurate
and should be interesting. But the script seems
little more than a rehash of films that have been
done before. The filmmakers did just about
everything right, but there is too much in the film
that is overly familiar. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4)
or 6/10
It has been quite a while since we have seen a film about World War I flying. With all the fragile biplanes and triplanes in dogfights and the style and chivalry of the fliers, this can be pretty heady stuff. In the period between the world wars
Hollywood made several great films about flying in the Great War. The very first Academy Award for Best Motion Picture went to the thrilling film WINGS. THE DAWN PATROL was another good one
people might watch for. But if you want to see how exciting a film can be made about World War I flying without any special effects, see HELL'S ANGELS. That is the monstrosity that Howard Hughes was making at the beginning of THE AVIATOR. The scenes on the ground are dated and admittedly fairly dull. But Howard Hughes's love was flying and the air scenes in that film have probably never been matched, particularly when you realize they were done virtually without any special effects. Once there was the Second World War, to make films about World War I flying films became sort of thin on the ground. Perhaps the only
remembered film on the subject is the 1966 THE BLUE MAX. So the subject of early air fighting has been neglected for a while except perhaps in venues like Turner Classic Movies. I cannot remember a more recent film on the subject until now.
The current FLYBOYS tells the story of a group of American boys from diverse parts of the country who went to fly with the French before the United States entered World War I. They come to
France untrained, make often-fatal mistakes, and learn to be ace pilots in aerial dogfights against the crack German fliers as part of the Lafayette Escadrille. With that romantic history behind it the script should practically have written itself. Unfortunately, the writers of the film allowed it to do just that. What we have is a film that would have been a knockout in the 1930s but now is too frequently lukewarm stuff. Part of the problem is that there were a lot of exciting things that happened to the Lafayette Escadrille, but the incidents chosen for this film have mostly shown up in previous films, albeit old ones. Close-ups of pilots' faces through the windscreen of the plane are perhaps unintentionally near-perfect recreations of scenes of actors like Buddy Rogers piloting his plane through the skies over France.
The film centers on Blaine Rawlings (played by James Franco, familiar as Spider-Man's best friend and worst enemy). He is a tall, handsome Texan who goes to France to escape a charge of assault on the banker who forecloses on his parents' ranch.
(Note the tying-in of an American hero to the cowboy. The cowboy is the quintessential American hero, so even if the context is different it is useful to establish your hero as a cowboy.
Notice a similar approach in the film THE RIGHT STUFF.) Rawlings is one of several Americans who cross the Atlantic in 1916 to answer the call to adventure. One American is there already. He is Eugene Skinner (Abdul Salis), an African-American boxer
fighting in the ring in France who decides to instead fight in the skies. With the exception of Rawlings, the pilots in the film seem to all be based on real pilots, and they are given the characteristics of the pilots. But they all seem similar and it becomes hard to tell them apart. The reviewer is reminded that this one is the religious guy because he sings "Onward Christian Soldiers" in the heat of battle, and that one is the rich guy because he will not room with a black man since in the United States the latter could be a servant. They are all trained and ruled over by the outwardly gruff but loving Captain Thenault (Jean Reno, who plays the only character who retained his real name for the film). Thenault may have really been tough on the outside and a cream puff on the inside, but who wants to see yet another commander portrayed that way?
Parts of the dialog are of questionable accuracy. The pilots are comparing notes on their fathers' professions. The above-
mentioned Skinner says that his father was a slave. Skinner is based on the real-life Eugene Bullard, the son of a former slave, but it is unlikely he would have thought of "slave" as his
father's profession more than half a century after the end of the Civil War.
Some of the scenes should be exciting, but the CGI robs them of impact. For example, the planes fight off a Zeppelin raid. They attack it full force with pixels, digits, and bits flying
everywhere, but the fact it is a computer image is all too
evident and steals the impact. (Say, did I recommend a film called HELL'S ANGELS?)
MGM has published an interesting--perhaps not too biased--
comparison of the film to the actual history it was based on, at <http://www.mgm.com/flyboys/pdf/real_vs_reel.pdf>. The PDF-file also contains historic photographs of the Lafayette Escadrille. I would say that it adds significantly to the experience of
seeing the film.
The problem with this film, and it may not be for the general viewer, is that the best stories about the Lafayette Escadrille are already familiar from old movies. When this film should be exciting, it is just a memory jogger about those old 1920s and 1930s films that showed the same scenes and managed the same excitement without ever using a computer. Older viewers may have seen a lot of this before and younger viewers may not be looking for a film about something called "the Lafayette Escadrille" for a fun time on Saturday night, but the history is worth learning about. On balance I rate FLYBOYS a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
Mark R. Leeper
[email protected]
Copyright 2006 Mark R. Leeper
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
