Flyboys

There haven't been many WWI dogfight movies since I dunno The Blue Max? A popular genre in the 1920s and 30s (you will recall Leonardo DiCaprio's Howard Hughes going for broke in The Aviator) it fell by the wayside after WWII for all the obvious reasons.

You would imagine that the primary motivation to revive the genre today would be to reflect on current events in some form. But maybe not: Flyboys harks back to such unfashionable ideas about heroism and war, it might have been written in 1916 as well as set then.

The Americans who volunteer for the Lafayette Escadrille flying corps are spurred on by different factors - one spoiled aristocrat (Tyler Labine) is signed up by his father; an African-American prizefighter (Abdul Salis) wants to show his appreciation to the French for accepting him without prejudice; two more are ducking unwanted attention (James Franco and David Ellison) - but all of them will show their true mettle under fire.

War itself is a dangerous business. We're repeatedly reminded that over a million have died by the time the American trainees arrive, and the more experienced squadron leader, Cassidy (Martin Henderson) wastes no time in informing the new recruits their life expectancy is only six weeks.

Nevertheless the aviators had a very different perspective on the fight from the doughboys in the trenches, and Flyboys is romantic and adventurous where Paths Of Glory, say, is cynical and nihilistic. Billeted in a French chateau (along with the squadron mascot, a lion called Whiskey), and enjoying enough down time to romance the locals, these guys enjoyed the high life in more ways than one.

Actually there may be some parallels with the marines residing in Saddam's old palaces but for whatever reason director Tony Bill and his three screenwriters go out of their way to sugarcoat the material, most especially in a bathetic and uninteresting romantic subplot in which Texan cowboy Rawlings (Franco) makes goggle eyes at innocent farm girl Lucienne (Jennifer Decker) - very definitely not a prostitute, he is quick to ascertain.

The scenes between the men are better, but equally predictable, with mostly stock characters overcoming telegraphed shortcomings (one is racist, for example, until the black pilot saves his life).

But aerial combat has always been the main attraction for this kind of movie. With their emphasis on technology, velocity and sudden death, films like Wings and Hell's Angels can be seen as precursors to today's action pictures. Flyboys mixes Fokkers and Sopwiths with artfully integrated CGI effects to produce half a dozen exciting dogfights. Even then, they're probably too clean and tidy, and certainly there is nothing here to compare with The Aviator for impact and adrenaline, but simply as spectacle the film can't be counted a complete failure. Whether that's enough to keep this 140-minute movie airborne I rather doubt.

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com