Amazon.co.uk Review
World War I aviation action gets an impressive digital upgrade in
Flyboys, a welcome addition to the "dogfight" sub-genre that includes such previous war-in-the-air films like
Hell's Angels,
Wings, and
The Blue Max. While those earlier films had the advantage of real and genuinely dangerous flight scenes (resulting, in some cases, in fatal accidents during production),
Flyboys takes full (and safe) advantage of the digital revolution, with intensely photo-realistic recreations of WWI aircraft, authentic period structures, and CGI environments requiring a total of 850 digital effects shots, resulting in an abundance of amazing images, many of them virtually indistinguishable from reality. Unfortunately, the film's technical achievement is more impressive than its screenplay, which conventionally and predictably tells the fact-based story, set in France in 1916, of the daring young pilots of the Lafayette Escadrille, a pioneering French air-combat unit that welcomed American enlistees prior to the United States' entry into the war.
There's a familiar cliché to match every thrilling scene of aerial combat, but director Tony Bill manages to keep it all interesting, from the romance between a young American maverick (James Franco) and a pretty French girl (newcomer Jennifer Decker) to the exciting action in the air, which includes a stock variety of heroes (many of them composites of real-life WWI pilots) and an intimidating villain known only as "The Black Falcon," whose Fokker Dr-1 triplane (one of many in the film) recalls the exploits of German "ace of aces" Manfred von Richtofen, the dreaded "Red Baron" of legend. With impeccable production values that will impress even the most nit-picking aviation buffs,
Flyboys (like
Superman Returns and
Apocalypto, also released in 2006) was also one of the first feature films to be shot with Panavision's state-of-the-art Genesis digital cameras, resulting in beautiful images that meet or exceed the visual nuance of film.
Flyboys also benefits from painstaking attention to physical detail, making it easier to forgive its shortcomings as a generic and formulaic slice of romanticised history. So while some viewers may have wished for a more realistic and grown-up depiction of the Lafayette Escadrille, it's safe to say that
Flyboys will be thrilling its target audience for many years to come.
--Jeff Shannon
Synopsis
FLYBOYS is a good old-fashioned historical drama concerning the Lafayette Escadrille, a French regiment of American volunteer airmen serving the allied cause in WWI before the US became officially involved. James Franco plays Blaine, a Texas rancher; he bunks with Eugene (Abdul Salis), an African American boxer whose been living in Paris as an ex-patriate to get away from American racism. Other fighters include a pampered New York scion (Tyler Labine) and a lanky, lazy Kansan (David Ellison). They all train under the patient hand of the French commander, succinctly embodied by the wondrous Jean Reno (LEON). Martin Henderson (TORQUE) is good and brusque as a jaded flier with a bunch of kills under his belt and an obsession with an ace German fighter; he wont let the new kids drink in the officer's club until they’ve shot down their first planes. It all unfolds in a no-nonsense linear narrative that reminds one of early films like THE DAWN PATROL (1930) and WINGS (1927); and there's a comfortingly familiar orchestral score that's heavy with the cloud-invoking wooden flute. But the CGI-enhanced aerial dogfight scenes are the crux of the feature, and history fans should be frothing at the mouth with all the zeppelins, dogfights and enemy chivalry. There's plenty of well-researched period detail and even some romance in the form of a good girl gone semi-bad from a nearby brothel (the very charming Jennifer Decker).
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