Customer Reviews

Flyboys [Blu-ray]

5 star:		(102)
4 star:		(89)
3 star:		(41)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(39)

 

 

The critics don't like it for the most part, but I really had a good time. Flyboys won't win any awards, but it sure entertained my packed theater. People laughed at most of the little jokes scattered throughout this long film. Clocking in at over two hours it is a bit too long and some of the dialogue is lacking, but the romance is handled well (unlike Pearl Harbor, thank God!), as are the many amazing CGI dogfight scenes. If your bored one afternoon, you should check out Flyboys, otherwise just wait for the DVD.

I have been looking forward to seeing this movie but became reluctant after reading the rather mediocre reviews it received from the so-called "experts". I decided to ahead and, as usual, the "experts" got it all wrong. FLYBOYS not only met my expectations, but also exceeded them.

I'm a big history buff and am usually very disappointed with Hollywood's rendition of historical events. For me, it really detracts from a movie when I see things like Sea Sparrow missile launchers on the deck of a destroyer in Pearl Harbor, or when William Wallace supposedly has a torrid affair with a Princess who was, in reality, only three years old at the time of his death, and I expected to find similar fault with this movie. I found no such errors here. The true life story was most accurate, including such details as the lion which served as the mascot for the Escadrille LaFayette, the dented bullets which the flying aces had to sort through before each flight, and the fact that over one million allied soldiers lost their lives at Verdun.

Hollywood movie critics have a difficult time with true stories. True life, especially when accurately presented, doesn't always have the same flair as fictionalized accounts, and critics have given rather harsh reviews of the plot, totally missing so many details surrounding such things as camaraderie, respect and traumatic real life emotions. And no, in real life, people don't always live happily ever after and the hero doesn't always ride off into the sunset with his sweetheart.

Beyond the historical accuracy portrayed here, the film has sensational filming, particularly in the air battle scenes. The aerial views depict the miles of devastation of French countryside surrounding the trenches. The casting is more than adequate with particular mention going to Jean Reno as Capt. Thenault. James Franco also gives a superb portrayal of American Ace Blaine Rawlings.

If you are a history lover, and particularly interested, as I am, in the Great War, I urge you to go and watch this movie. You will find it historically accurate and yet able to bridge the gap into being an entertaining movie. Remember that this is not some Hollywood enhanced idea of war, but rather an accurate depiction of the real life events that surrounded the American pilots who became the Escadrille LaFayette. The critics got this one all wrong. Surprise, surprise.

Monty Rainey
www.juntosociety.com

Flyboys didn't last long in theaters upon its release, but don't let that scare you away, it's an above average WWI period drama. During World War I, a group of American pilots joined the fighting in Europe before the United States entered the war in 1918. Flying for the French, they were named the Lafayette Escadrille. The movie follows five or six freshly arrived pilots, most notably James Franco as Texan Blaine Rawlings, as they train and learn how to fly and ultimately join the war as they take on German fighters, most notably the Black Falcon, a German pilot who doesn't follow the "rules of war." All in all, this was a pretty good movie. It's by no means a great movie, but it kept me entertained for the full 140 minute running time. The added love story isn't as bad as I thought it'd be, but the movie didn't need that storyline. It would have been better if the storyline focused primarily on the pilots and the dogfights, which are the high points of the movie. Go see this movie for the dogfights, especially the zeppelin attack on Paris and the final showdown between Rawlings and the Black Falcon!

One of the complaints of the movie was that it is too cliched, and this is partly true, but for me it felt like the actors did the best they could with what they have. James Franco gets top billing as Texan Blaine Rawlings, a young rancher who joins the war after his ranch went under. Along with flying with the Escadrille, he falls in love with a French girl, Lucien (French beauty Jennifer Decker), who can't speak English. My favorite character is Reed Cassidy (Martin Henderson), the veteran pilot who slowly opens up to the new pilots. The rest of the young pilots who arrive with Rawlings include Phillip Winchester as William Jensen, the golden boy who knows he'll become a hero, Tyler Labine as Briggs Lowry, a young man from a rich family who is trying to prove himself to his father, Abdul Salis as Eugene Skinner, the lone African-American pilot in the group who must prove himself while also dealing with some racism, and David Ellison as Eddie Beagle, the struggling pilot who may or may not have a suspicious background. Jean Reno is excellent in a small part as the captain of the squadron, Capt. Thenault, but it's too bad he couldn't have been used more.

The soon to be released two-disc DVD, Jan. 30, 2007, will offer a boatload of special features which I'm definitely looking forward to watching. There will be several making of featurettes, some history about the real Lafayette Escadrille, an audio commentary with director Tony Bill and producer Dean Devlin, deleted scenes, trailers, and a Flyboys Squadron DVD-rom game. So for a movie with some excellent dogfights and aerial sequences, a pretty good ensemble cast, and a not so bad love story, look for the two-disc DVD of Flyboys in January!

Flyboys is a decent adventure film, but with apologies to reviewer Monty Rainey, it can hardly be praised for its historical accuracy. The computer-generated planes zip around more like jet fighters than WW1 planes, making snap-rolls & vertical climbs rather than Immelman turns & the slower, more gradual maneuvers the real planes were capable of. The Nieuports the Escadrille fly were obsolete & replaced by Spads by late 1916/early 1917 (when the movie takes place--they mention the USA entering the war which was April, 1917), and the Fokker Triplane didn't enter service until the winter of 1917 & never in great numbers (very few were red by the way). These quibbles aside, what really destroys the believabilty of the movie is when one of the Flyboys gets shot down & crashes in no-man's land (at a point where the German & French lines seem to be about 50 yards apart when a half mile is about the closest they ever actually got). Though he's in the cockpit when it crashes, the pilot somehow gets his hand trapped between the ground & the upper wing (which miraculously didn't collapse when the plane flipped upside down). And he can't get it out! His friend has to land (apparently also in no-man's land), run THRU no-man's land perpendicular to all the Germans shooting at him, & help his friend get his hand out. (I won't spoil it by saying how.) WW1 fighters weighed roughly 1000 lbs, with the engine & guns comprising over half the total weight. The top wing his hand was trapped under would have weighed about 100 lbs total. If your hand was trapped under one side, you'd simply lift it off with your free hand. Also the trailing edge of the Nieuport was made up of a pine-wood stringer which was one inch square. He could have cut your way thru it with a penknife. OR, since his hand was trapped between the wing & the GROUND, he could have simply dug the earth away underneath it.
Other blatant inaccuracies: the Germans invade with tanks of British design a year before the tank was invented; they've made a massive breakthrough within a few miles of the airfield & the pilots (& the hero's French girlfriend living in the war zone) are completely unaware of it; the hero takes off at night, lands (where? in a field, in the dark?) by his girl friend's house, & none of the thousands of German soldiers in the area hear the plane. . .
For all that, it's not a bad action movie, but as far as being realistic? They should have just made the movie about the real Escadrille pilots. Raoul Lufbery's true exploits would have been much more exciting. (To anyone interested in the true story of the Escadrille, I heartily recommend Jeff Shaara's novel about WW1, TO THE LAST MAN. And for a movie that gets to the heart of what flying in WW1 was really like, try THE DAWN PATROL with Errol Flynn (coming out in March on dvd).

The real actors?

Well, there's poor James Franco, a fine young actor, who must be cursing his bad luck in getting to play the leading man only in movies plagued by rotten screenplays and supporting casts, and also in losing the leading man role (and then having to play second fiddle) to some wimp in that blockbuster series of all time, Spider-man...

And then there's Jean Reno, Hollywood's favorite token Frenchman (even though he was born in Morocco to Spanish parents, as Juan Moreno), once again playing the earnest, understanding wise man with the funny French accent........ gosh, if only all French people could be just like him! ......especially those nasty waiters and shopkeepers in Paris, and those anti-American French politicians......

This movie had so many clichéd scenes in it that I began to realize that the filmmakers must have thought that they could get away with it because the younger movie-going generation wouldn't recognize these as clichés, since most are from an older generation of movies. It must save money to just recycle the old classic scenes, instead of hiring better, more original screenwriters.

There's the obligatory sendoff at the train station with the girlfriend running alongside the train (I winced during this scene, half expecting the girl to run splat into a signpost.........ooops, wrong movie, that was from one of the "Hot Shots" series); the obligatory first fight at the bar amongst the airmen; the obligatory hero's death with kamikaze swan dive into the mission target; the obligatory hero saves girl - hero loses girl plot; the obligatory devout Christian, who might as well have also been carrying a sign saying "I'LL BE DEAD MEAT SOON" along with his Bible.

So what about the non-actors?

Chief among them has to be David Ellison, son of billionaire Larry Ellison of Oracle Software. Daddy helped finance a good chunk of the $60 million budget of this movie which meant that, despite a complete lack of any acting ability, on a scale similar to the fiasco that was Jake Lloyd (little Anakin - Stars Wars, Phantom Menace), and despite an intensely annoying screen presence equivalent to that of Jar Jar Binks from that same movie, David Ellison gets huge amounts of screen time, including a constant series of brief cutaway shots focused on him, designed to subliminally remind the viewer that he's in this movie........OOOOOFFTA........can you spell N-A-R-C-I-S-S-I-S-T ?

Another near non-actor, Jennifer Decker - the girl who plays James Franco's love interest Lucienne. OK, she's sort of cute, but who told her that the way to play a French girl who doesn't speak English is to act like a deaf-mute? How the heck did SHE get this role? We used to come to the answer to that question quite easily, but unfortunately, it is no longer politically correct to say such things in public.

Historically, a number of things are not quite right. The Nieuport 17s that the airmen are supposedly flying had rotary engines, not the radial engines depicted. NONE of the fighters of WWI had radial engines in fact, since air cooling technology had not developed fully to allow for fixed cylinder heads (in the rotary engines, the cylinder heads of the engine spun around together with the propeller, thus providing superior air cooling). In any case, the Lafayette Escadrille would quickly lose the Nieuport 17s and mostly fly SPADs (which had inline engines) for much of the war.

And those bullet holes! Come on! The planes were made of fabric and wood, and had absolutely NO ARMOR! If bullets hit all around the cockpit, the pilot is DEAD! How the heck could James Franco's plane be so riddled with bullets in that last dogfight, and he only gets hit ONCE!?

That's just my two bits on the historical inaccuracies - there are a great many in this movie which have been pointed out by other reviewers already.

However, in spite of all its flaws, this was a moderately entertaining movie. I watched it as a $2 rental, on my 23" widescreen computer monitor, so that I could surf the Internet whenever the movie got too inane. It's the only way to watch this movie, as far as I'm concerned. Whenever Jar Jar..., I mean, David Ellison,... appeared onscreen, I would Google something about him or his billionaire father - these multi-tasking distractions helped to get me through those scenes, and reminded me also that money has its privileges.

I give the movie one star for James Franco's earnest performance, one star for the CGI flying sequences, and one star for trying to tell some of the history of WWI, even if the details got mangled

As someone with a great interest in WWI, I had high hopes for "Flyboys" but found it to be a rather excruciating experience watching one-dimensional cardboard cutouts religiously follow every single last cliche' in the Hollywood playbook. A movie about a group of Americans who violated their nation's neutrality laws to fight for a foreign power in a senseless, fratricidal war, I was going to give it 2 stars for the impressive dogfighting scenes, thinking at least some of it was performed by actual pilot reenactors, until I found out that it was all CGI-generated and technologically anachronistic to boot. In any case, all the action in the world couldn't save a movie with such a predictable story and such generically boring characters.

A professor once told me that a quick test of the quality of a novel or movie's characterization is whether you remember the characters' names. This movie was so mind-numbing, I was lucky to remember my own name by the end, never mind the protagonist's! I don't know if these were bad actors or they just had bad material to work with, but my family and I certainly didn't remember anyone's names, and were forced to refer to the characters by their physical attributes. Unfortunately, only a few of them- Blackie, Fatty and Spiderman-guy- had any kind of unique features, while the rest seemed as undistinguishable as snowflakes. We were glad when one of them got his hand cut off, because he then gained an identity as "Hookhand", and we were hoping the others would similarly discover their individuality- i.e. Burnedface, Lack-nose, One-eye - but we were disappointed.

As terrible as the characters were- and I can't describe to you the interminable horror of watching a monolingual American try to woo a retarded French girl- the plot was even more disgraceful. If you've ever seen any sports movie, you've seen this one: A motley group of American misfits initially get their clocks cleaned by big, bad German bullies, led by the "Black Falcon." Our scrappy Yanks get their act together and start to hold their own against the German B-team. When the Black Falcon knocks out our ace, the young hero vows revenge, which he dramatically achieves with the unexpected help of a character previously thought to be useless. Look up the word "formulaic" in the dictionary and the definition will probably say "the plot of 'Flyboys.'" Skip this one, and let's just pretend it doesn't exist.

I took 6 friends to see this movie and we all thought it rocked. The flying sequences are killer! While unlike most flying movie the out of plane story is done well. It has some great funny lines,a beutiful french girl,and some intence oh my god fasten your seatbelt action! The movies ends with some historical photos of the real escadrille. This gives it even more historicly
acurate feeling. Even though some of the insignias are not accurate and no there are not 300 red baron planes. This is a great movie, thats just fun to watch. So buy Flyboys!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have just had an interesting time perusing the 101 previous reviews. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me there's a wide range of opinion out there. How often do we find headlines running from one-starred "Save your money" to three-starred "Good enough" to five-starred "Best movie of 2006 - also best kept secret"? And all three comments in consecutive reviews on a single Amazon "page"?

[For the enlightenment of any cynics out there, I read the reviews and the attached comments as well as the headlines.]

The main objection to "Flyboys" seemed to arise from the innumerable errors found on the screen. They ranged from the airplanes that did not exist at the time of the film, to the super-abundance of Red Barons infesting the skies above France, to the breathtaking indifference to the laws of physics, to the positively giddy misapprehensions about what actually took place in the First World War (aka The Great War aka The War to End All Wars ... ahem.) Now you may think that these historical boners, these intellectual clunkers are characteristic of video game-addled, Star Wars-bedazzled, comic book-educated lunkheads and lamebrains rather than of responsible adults given control over the millions and millions of dollars required to make a motion picture--but I say to err is human and to provide reason for selling all that overpriced popcorn is near-divine (at least for the theater owners.)

A smaller group of naysayers held forth that the plot of the movie made no sense and that the people on the screen masquerading as actors displayed no slightest hint of talent. I heartily dispute the latter. The always excellent Jean Reno, who portrayed the French commandant of the flyboy squadron, was right up there on the screen to show what a competent actor looks like. For several minutes, at least.

Enough negativity. Most reviewers clearly loved this picture. Many of them took up such stirring war cries as, "Never listen to the CRITICS! This is one of the BEST!!!!", "Never mind the critics" and "The critics don't get it,"--not to mention the immortal, "Don't listen to the `experts.'" And the reasons they gave to turn off your mind and just drool in your seat were ... uh, and .... Oh, yes, here's one, and by far the best of the bunch: "I took my 4-year old to see it, and he loved it." Yes! Absolutely!! Take that you hyper-critical snobs!!!

As for myself , I shall venture just one small criticism: not one minute, not one second, not one frame of the flying sequences looked convincing. "Flyboys" is the most compelling argument I have ever seen against using CGI on a motion picture screen. "Cheesy," "unreal" and unintentionally hilarious" don't even come close to expressing the way I feel about this visual train wreck.

Take the vaunted Zeppelin sequence: the animation in "Wallace and Grommet" was more convincing. Much more. Now look at the Zeppelin sequence in Howard Hughes' 1930 blockbuster, "Hell's Angels." Both are special effects sequences. The 21st century version just lies down and dies, leaving a bad taste in your mouth. Its 76 year-old predecessor (in color, mind you!) pins you back in your seat. When the Zep crashes, if I hadn't known the date of "Hell's Angels" I'd have believed that Hughes had intercut some lost color film of the Hindenberg tragedy.

DVD STUFF: In my journey through the earlier reviews, I noticed that some critics looked askance at comments addressed solely to the film and not to the DVD. With that in mind I hasten to inform everyone that "Flyboys" appears on one or more plastic disks, and that in some editions it is accompanied by other stuff of no discernible significance.

A FINAL WISTFUL THOUGHT: Wouldn't it be nice if somebody, somewhere, someday made a movie about the Lafayette Escadrille?

Where does one start when reviewing a movie like "Flyboys"? Does one discuss the attention to historical detail? The facts behind the real-life Lafayette Escadrille? The surprisingly great acting from a cast largely comprised of unknowns? The amazing flying sequences and special effects?
Really, the movie "Flyboys" is a monumental achievement and an effort of which everyone involved in it can take pride.
Prior to the United States entry into World War I a number of American men traveled to Europe lured by a fascination with the relatively new ability to fly (many people had never seen an airplane at this time). They joined a squadron known as the Lafayette Escadrille (named after the French general who aided America during the Revolutionary War).
Airflight was incredibly dangerous at this time and even more so when flying into a combat zone. Aerial dog-fighting was also a close quarters affair with mere feet between opposing pilots. Indeed the life expectancy for WWI pilots was also extremely short. As one character comments of another's hard edged nature "Bet he doesn't make friends easily." The always excellent Jean Reno interjects with "All of his friends are dead!"
So into this backdrop comes "Flyboys" which follows the stories of a group of mismatched new arrivals to the squadron. We have, among others, a Texas rancher faced with the repossession of his land, a young aristocrat seeking the approval of his father, an African American prize fighter eager to repay the kindness shown to him by the French and a young man seeking to follow in his families military heritage.
Together they forge a friendship and from stumbling beginnings an effective fighting force.
It's an engaging drama and one that I have already ewatched three times. It is nicely complemented on this DVD release by an impressive number of special features the prize of which, for me at least, is the documentary on the inspirations for the characters and historical research and a second one on the real-life Lafayette Escadrille. There is of course a very engaging commentary track which also highlights the great amount of detail that went into the making of the movie.
When it was released the movie was criticized by some rather ignorant reviewers who railed against some of the details in the movie. They complained for example about the gunman atop a zeppelin shooting at the fighters buzzing around him. This, however, as the producer Dean Devlin explains, was based on historical fact when Devlin came across a picture of one such gunman in a history book of WWI.
Yes, "Flyboys" is an impressive achievement and well worth your time and money.

This is an awfully good looking movie put together by some very gifted veteran film makers. Unfortunately, it seems not to have occurred to any of them to consult even a rudimentary history of World War I before embarking on this.

"Flyboys" is supposedly set against the backdrop of that war but in fact it is not. It takes place in an alternate universe where things are very different.

Okay, a good movie has dramatic needs. But usually its fictions are things that "could have happened" within the context of a larger historical backdrop. Consider...

(1) The actual war opened with a German drive on Paris in 1914 which stalled out at the Marne. Both sides dug in there, and each extended their flanks until parallel trench lines ran uninterrupted for 475 miles from the Swiss border to the sea. And there they sat...

This was the notorious "trench deadlock" that gripped the western front from late 1914 through early 1918. The film supposedly takes place during this period but...

(2) "Flyboys" forgets the trenches and strangely posits an imaginary German drive on Paris around 1916. Airmen of the Escadrille try to thwart it by escorting bombers to attack German supply depots. What is even more odd is that when this raid fails, they simply lose interest in the threat to Paris and turn to other missions.

(3) The only major German offensive in this period was actually at Verdun. It was a bloody struggle that lasted months and accomplished little, but cost over a million lives. The Escadrille is based at Verdun in the movie so its airmen should be in the middle of this crisis. Yet they seem blissfully unaware something is amiss.

(4) There is mention of "sending children to England" for safety. A touching cinematic moment, but there was no need to flee France in World War I. If necessary, you simply moved farther away from the front.

(5) Around mid-film the surprising announcement is made that "the Germans have moved across the Meuse" -- and indeed we see soldiers marching across open fields.

But again, as with the drive on Paris, how did these troops get past the Allied trenches?

A massive breech of the Allied line would be needed, with follow up forces penetrating deep into open country in the rear. Such a staggering event would have shaken France to the core.

But here it merely provides the hero an opportunity to fly to the rescue of his sweetheart and evacuate her by air to safety. After that bit of personal drama the film once again simply loses interest in the situation.

(6) The Zeppelin daylight suicide raid on Paris seems like another fanciful concoction. Zeppelins raided England at night but were never very effective. Here we are given a lovely cinematic death ride that makes no sense.

(7) Toward the end of the film the Germans renew that strange drive on Paris. This time it triggers an evacuation of the French capital, apparently to create a poignant background against which the romance between the airman and French girl plays out.

Germany was incapable of such an attempt until the collapse of Russia in 1917, which allowed transfer of a million troops from the east. Then came the great German offensives of 1918, but none were aimed at Paris and there was no evacuation.

Bottom line:

"Flyboys" routinely destroys any remote possibility of understanding this important event by huge and impossible distortions made for the most casual and fleeting of purposes. There is more than enough exceptional material in the history of this war to meet any dramatic requirements of film makers. They seem not to have bothered to even look at it.

It is strange to see young student reviewers call this film "a good way to learn about WW I."

Look, I'm no historian. These remarks are from memory based on having read a few books on this war some years back. That's not much, but it was enough to bedevil sincere efforts on my part to get some sort of handle on the peculiar world of "Flyboys."

I very much wanted to like this movie but fear it is a pleasure reserved for those who know little about its subject matter.