FLYBOYS Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
MGM/ Electric Entertainment
Grade: C+
Directed by: Tony Bill
Written By: David S. Ward, story by Phil Sears, Blake Evans
Cast: James Franco, Jean Reno, Scott Hazel, Mac McDonald, Philip Winchester, David Ellison, Tayler Labiner, Martin Henderson, Abdul Salis, Todd Boyce, Jennifer Decker, Shaka the Lion
Screened at: Park Ave., NYC, 9/18/06
Opens: September 22, 2006 Mention World War I to today's youths and you're likely to get a
reply, "You mean there was one before the Second World War?
The conflict of 1914-1919 has faded into history, to be jumbled
together with the Peloponnesian Wars, the Punic Wars, and The War of Jenkins' Ear. There is some possibility, however, that some have seen the three best dramas of WWI, Stanley
Kubrick's "Paths of Glory" (three soldiers executed for
cowardice in refusing to go on a suicidal charge), Peter
Weir's "Gallipoli" (youthful idealists meet their fate in yet another
suicidal charge), and Lewis Milestone's "All Quiet on the
Western Front" (German boys experiencing WWI). “Flyboys” cannot begin to compare with those greats, nor would its cast and crew consider the pic in the competition. This is an old-fashioned, straightforward war picture that might have been made in the fifties but would fit in with the World War II pictures we saw during the early forties. Most of these are throwaways, though the standout would have to be Mervyn LeRoy’s “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,” which starred Van Johnson, Spencer Tracy and Robert Mitchum. More like the games at Coney Island’s penny arcade than something that could wow the fans of X-Box and PlayStation, “Flyboys” is inspired by the actual feats of the Lafayette Escadrille, focused on a squadron of idealistic youths who went to France in 1916 before the U.S. entered the war to engage in real adventure. Some may have looked for a way to sow some oats before settling down to careers in accounting, but one member of the team went to avoid an arrest for armed bank robbery (with a toy pistol) while another was intent on showing his rich daddy that he too can accomplish one great thing with his otherwise slacker life. The movie trots out all the cliches, its trajectory going from character development to a fight to a budding romance to another fight, to the predictable enough deaths of some in the unit, to the Americans’ actually getting plaudits from the skeptical French, who afforded them the honor of calling them killers. To his credit, director Tony Bill, himself a licensed pilot with a particular enthusiasm for the Second World War, has assembled a host of actual World War I fighter planes. While these look pretty fragile, laughably like the model planes that we as kids used to glue together long before computers and cell phones became our principal toys, flying them must have been more fun than sitting in the cockpit of an F-14. You’re out in the open as though driving a Harley, decked out with goggles and a cool hat, waving at your buddies and in one case even saluting your enemy. The scariest character, however, is Shaka the Lion, who is the mascot of the unit and who gives a fright to these macho youngsters at first sight. A likable James Franco, who could be a clone of James Dean and in fact portrayed him in one movie, inhabits the role of Blaine Rawlings, thrown out of his spacious, but now foreclosed Texas ranch. He joins a diverse group including William Jensen (Philip Winchester), Briggs Lowry (Tyler Labiner), Eddie Beagle (David Ellison), but the most surprising of the bunch is Eugene Skinner (Abdul Salis), whose father was a slave and who left a racist U.S. to live in France. While there he made a living in the boxing ring, giving up the sport because he wanted to give something back to a country that gave him so much. The one member who is not an idealist, Reed Cassidy (Martin Henderson), is credited with twenty-eight kills. One can hardly retain a sense of innocence with such a record. Under the captaincy of Georges Thenault (Jean Reno in a role that does little to challenge his thesp skills), the boys learn fast without going through the humiliating rigors of basic training which would have been their fate had they joined a branch of service in their home country. (Maybe there’s a lesson there for the U.S. armed forces.) What’s a war picture (think Michael Bay’s “Pearl Harbor”) without romance? Director Bill joins Rawlings in chaste but romantic interludes with a local girl, Lucienne D’Arcy (Jennifer Decker), each speaking barely a word of the other’s language. Does anyone doubt that Rawlings will have the opportunity to save her life when the Germans break into her modest home? The fights look realistic, but become tiresome and repetitious–as do even the romantic interludes. Much of the overlong movie feels like padding, though we do get a sense of what it’s like to fly in planes that were constructed just thirteen years (or fewer) after the all-too-brief flight of the Wright Brothers in North Carolina. They’re now death machines, armed with machine guns, vulnerable even in an age when not even German technology could come up with drones or heat-seeking missiles. If this is your kind of pic, try to find a videocassette of William Wellman’s 1958 movie “Lafayette Escadrille” and see if you can spot a young Clint Eastwood in a cast that includes the director’s son playing his dad–who was an actual pilot during the war. Rated PG-13 139 minutes 2006 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com Member: NY Film Critics Online | 
