Flyboys (22 September 2006)
directed by Tony Bill
starring James Franco, Philip Winchester, Michael Jibson, Abdul Salis, Tyler Labine, David Ellison, Jean Reno, Augustin Legrand, Martin Henderson, Keith McErlean, Lex Shrapnel, Jennifer Decker, Tim Pigott-Smith
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MPAA rating: Studio: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Electric Entertainment, Ingenious Film Partners, Skydance Productions Script: Phil Sears, Blake T. Evans, David S. Ward Music: Trevor Rabin Running time: 140 minutes Tags: Action; Adventure; airplanes; amputations; dogfights; Drama; France; war; World War I Tactical strength: [6/10]
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for war action violence and some sexual content
Flyboys retells the story of the Lafayette Escadrille, Americans who volunteered to fly for the French military in World War I. The film establishes that most of the volunteers had special reasons for enlisting. Blaine Rawlings (James Franco) lost his ranch to bank foreclosure, beat up the bank manager, and left town after the sheriff literally gave him a thirty minute head start. Other volunteers enlisted for various reasons: to continue a family tradition of military service, to satisfy a rich father who thinks military service will cure his spoiled son, and to escape arrest for bank robbery. The boys live in a mansion and train with Captain Thenault (Jean Reno). We watch the usual conflicts between experienced and new flyers and the typical development of the boys from selfish attitudes to interdependent teamwork.
Director Tony Bill provides excellent aerial combat sequences, and perhaps just these scenes provide enough enjoyment to carry the entire film, since the plot and character development follow very predictable arcs. When the script has the characters on the ground, we see cliché after cliché. Blaine shows up for his first formation without a uniform. The rich kid initially refuses to room with the black kid. The experienced pilot treats the new enlistees with disdain until they have earned respect in the air.
The script does provide a few surprises. At one point, one of the pilots crashes in no-man's-land, and Blaine runs through the French and German bullets to rescue his comrade. After several ineffective attempts to save his friend (getting three French infantrymen killed in the process), Blaine comes up with a unique approach to saving his friend. The script also provides several truly suspenseful moments, such as when the Germans reach the town where Blaine's girlfriend (Jennifer Decker) lives, and he disobeys orders from his Captain to rescue her.
The film tries to develop too many of the characters. Even with more than two hours of screen time, once you subtract the hour or more of on-screen dogfights, you don't have enough time left to develop the characters of the original six pilots, the interrelationship between the pilots, the rivalry between senior and junior pilots, and Blaine's romance. The script also telegraphs the plot way in advance. You can pretty much see the ending coming about an hour off. Although the romance provides some roundness to Blaine's character, I don't see that it really adds to the overall effect of the film.
The younger actors all do well with their roles. During many of the dogfights, I had a hard time differentiating the characters since they all wore identical hats and goggles. Too many of the shots show just the pilot's face instead of a shot farther back showing the pilot and the pilot's individualized logo painted on the side of the plane. Jean Reno coasts through his role as Captain of the Escadrille -- the script doesn't do anything to take advantage of his broad abilities and instead just relies on Reno fulfilling stereotypes of French military officers.
Essentially, you should see Flyboys for the excellent dogfights. You need the basic story line so you will care enough about the pilots when they die, but otherwise the plot doesn't do much to enlighten the audience about Americans serving in the French military as some of the first wartime aviators.
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