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Flyboys (12A)
© Unknown - all rights reserved |
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| Tookey's Rating |
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5
/10 |
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| Average Rating |
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4.04
/10 |
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| Starring |
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James Franco, Jean Reno, Philip Winchester
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| Full Cast > |
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Directed by:
Tony Bill
Written by:
Phil Sears, David S. Ward, Blake T. Evans from a story by Evans
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| Released: |
2006 |
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| Genre: |
ACTION
DRAMA
ADVENTURE
ROMANCE
WAR
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| Origin: |
France/ US |
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| Colour: |
C |
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| Length: |
139 |
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Flyboys is a defiantly old-fashioned aerial combat picture. Like most of its kind, from the gung-ho Wings (1927) to the anti-war Aces High (1976), it’s more thrilling in the air than on the ground. This is because of its defiantly earthbound script, which omits no cliche of its genre and boasts a banal romantic subplot that would have bored the pants off audiences in 1927, let alone 2007. |
Reviewed by Chris Tookey
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| Paradoxically for a movie that feels manufactured and over-familiar, every character in it – even the most unlikely one, a black boxer who flew missions on equal terms with his white fellow-aviators – is founded on reality. And some of the most obviously implausible background details – such as the squadron’s adoption of a lioness as its mascot – are true as well. | | Unfortunately, veteran Tony Bill directs with all the flair of Sven Goran Erickson; and the screenplay is lamentable hackwork. The order in which pilots die is as predictable as in any slasher film, and every character is airbrushed and flattened into Hollywood stereotype. | | Leading actor James Franco, as the obligatory bad boy, cocky ace-pilot and sharp-shooter, is a particular disappointment. He gives a passable impersonation of Tom Cruise in Top Gun, but he’s capable of better. | | Franco rose to prominence five years ago with an excellent, brooding performance in City by the Sea, which suggested he might be the new James Dean, or even the new Brando. Since then he has achieved celebrity and made himself a teenage girl’s pin-up as the troubled Harry Osborn in the Spider-Man trilogy. | | But there is a worrying blandness in his recent performances. He was especially weak in last year’s Tristan and Isolde, in which he was acted off the screen by another heart-throb whose good looks have been a mixed blessing, Rufus Sewell. It’s as though Franco has been much too busy taking handsomeness lessons. | | Despite all these glaring flaws – and don’t get me started on Trevor Rabin’s crass, over-emphatic score - Flyboys has charm and sincerity, and it’s the only movie this week that I could bear to see again. | | Its most praiseworthy aspect is the way it honours the memory of some genuinely brave American pilots who flew fragile, flammable, open-cockpit biplanes in World War I – and, amazingly, without parachutes. | | Modern CGI special effects make it possible to simulate their dogfights more accurately than previously. You really do share a sense of what they went through, and why their average life expectancy was under six weeks. | | You emerge from the picture feeling genuine admiration for these “knights of the air”. Flyboys is a far cry from the faux-sophisticated sneering and voyeuristic sadism of most modern movies portraying violent death. | |
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