Posted: 09/29/2006

Flyboys

(2006)

by Tony Liccardello

Okay, I’ll admit it. I am a sucker for any film that focuses on fighter jets or dogfights, pretty much anything that can attempt to be as badass as Top Gun, one of my all-time favorite flicks. And after watching Flyboys, you do sort of realize how much further action films that take place in the sky need to go in order to recapture that magical goodness that Top Gun offers. Flyboys does have some solid action scenes, but becomes bogged down by an uninteresting story that leaves you waiting to long for the good stuff. That really is quite sad, since this is supposedly based on a true story.

James Franco plays Blaine Rawlings, an American pilot who flies for the French during the first World War. That is the first problem with this film: James Franco should not be in any leading roles just yet. His accent isn’t accurate and reminds me of the laughable effort Nicolas Cage made in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.

The crew that of misfit pilots that surround Rawlings are the cardboard-cutout type that surround most Michael Bay epics. Besides the French Commander (played by Jean Reno), the supporting characters don’t have the acting chops or generate enough interest with the screen time given to them. This is probably the result of the film being miscast in general.

So these pilots have flying lessons during the war? I am not sure that is exactly how it went. The story is clichéd and predictable. The troubled protagonist learns how to fly, meets a lovely girl, forms a band of brothers, fights with the training instructor, and eventually becomes a good pilot. (Basically, a carbon copy of Top Gun.)

It seems like the creators of this story spent most of their time making the actions scenes look pretty. This isn’t a surprise since the best sequences of the film are the flying ones. The CGI is decent, and while it doesn’t really have any ground breaking camera work (a la Top Gun), it does have its share of exciting dogfights. Director Tony Bill and his cinematographer did a giving a close and personal feel to the characters in each plane during the aerial scenes. And while a few times it is quite obvious they were filming in front of a blue screen, the special effects were effectively done for the most part.

Flyboys is a better action film than Stealth, the last aerial action film I was disappointed in. While that isn’t saying much (since Stealth sucked), Flyboys is probably best left as a rental for the die-hards of the action genre.

Grade: 2 stars out of 5

Tony Liccardello is a film critic and filmmaker living in Chicago.

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