You’ll like Flyboys
if you like aviation history.
You’ll like Flyboys if you
like “historical recreation” movies.
You won’t like Flyboys if you
like, y’know, good movies.
In WWI, France established the Lafayette Escadrille. Think of it as a Foreign Legion, but
with American pilots. This film
is, generally, based on their story.
Many of the people portrayed here really existed, and many of the things
we see them do actually happened.
So, hey, so far so good.
But here’s the problem: the screenplay’s just too
tight. Every fact about the
escadrille’s planes that we learn early in the film becomes important in combat
later on. The love story feels
like a detour from the plot. We
predict nearly every beat and, though the planes look pretty and the uniforms
crisp, this film offers no suspense, no surprise, nothing that we expect in
narrative cinema. This feels like
a story that’s hitting all the marks from one of those screenwriting books, and
it certainly has the best intentions of hagiographying the Corps. But there’s no soul here, no fuzziness,
nothing that makes it feel like it’s about real people and not just lists of
traits noted on index cards.
Nevertheless, I like aviation history. I like “historical recreation” movies. Flyboys wasn’t
much good, but it did teach me something about its world. I guess there’s that.
