>>REVIEW
FLYBOYS
STARRING James Franco, Jennifer Decker and Jean Reno
DIRECTED BY Tony Bill
Opens Friday, September 22,
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The plot of Flyboys sounds tailor-made for a big screen epic; young Americans travel overseas to learn how to fly planes and join the battle against the Germans in the skies over France. If audiences are expecting Saving Private Ryan size set pieces and battles, or Pearl Harbor’s "we can do it all ’cause we’re American" flag waving, they will be quite surprised. Flyboys is a smaller, more intimate film that gets up-close and personal with the men of the Lafayette Escadrille, the first fighter pilots of World War One. Undoubtedly, director Tony Bill’s large body of work in television is the biggest reason for this feel.
The film has a definite romanticism about it, not just concerning the relationship between pilot Rawlings (James Franco) and a shy French girl (Jennifer Decker), but because of its dashing pilots and their brave flights into the fray. Everything about the film, from the portrayal of the pilots as idealistic and naive, to the musical score, lends to it’s classic film feel, with the only exception to that being the realistic, but not overly indulgent use of violence in some of the battle scenes.
The battle scenes in question are the ones involving the dogfights which, while heavy on the CGI, are fantastically entertaining with vintage bi-planes and tri-wing planes in Star Wars-like aerial battles. The most important element that comes across in these conflicts is the intimate and personal nature of the battlefield in the skies. The idea that opposing pilots could see each other as they circled and passed, is somewhat disturbing and gives each "kill" a higher level of humanity, and at the same time gives the movie’s sub-plots of adversarial pilots some validity.
Franco shows the promise of being a capable leading man while Jean Reno is underused as the commander of the Escadrille. The area in which Flyboys fails to make contact is with its stock, stereotypical supporting cast of the racist guy, the cocky guy, the black guy, the religious guy, etc. While this doesn’t take too much away from the audience’s overall enjoyment of the story, it makes the incredibly important "bonding" of the pilots feel quite forced (i.e. racist and black guy).
But Flyboys greatest achievement is in proving a point that is extremely vital for the future of aviation films; it is possible to make an entertaining film about pilots and their planes without the music of Kenny Loggins or the Bruckheimer sunset filter. |
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