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`Flyboys’ makes for one long night
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You may have heard of the legendary Lafayette Escadrille, a strappy sandal with a rope sole, available at a big department store in Paris.
Oh, wait, that’s the espadrille.
The Lafayette Escadrille was a small group of (mostly) Americans who enlisted in the fledgling French air corps in the bloody months before the United States threw itself into the first World War.
From New England colleges and plains state farms, these dashing young Yanks ventured to France to fly, fight tyranny and maybe meet a pretty mademoiselle or two. At least, that’s how the harmlessly romantic “Flyboys” (based on the true story) tells it.
Tucked into the open-air cockpits of Sopwith Camels and other single-engine biplanes with machine guns propped on the fuselage, these jaunty fellows buzzed around the skies, risking their lives and often losing them in battles against the better, faster, nastier flying machines of the German Empire. Hollywood’s very first Oscar winner, William A. Wellman’s 1927 silent, “Wings,” chronicled the daring aerial dogfights of World War I (In fact, several decades later in 1958, Wellman made “Lafayette Escadrille” with Tab Hunter about this very same group of volunteer airmen).
“Flyboys,” directed by Tony Bill and starring James Franco, Philip Winchester, Martin Henderson, Abdul Salis, Tyler Labine and David Ellison as the white-scarfed, French-uniformed Americans has computer imaging and a fleet of vintage aircraft on its side, but it remains considerably less convincing than “Wings” and less exciting.
Shot like a Disney period piece (prettily, with spiffy props, shiny vintage vehicles and costumes just back from the cleaners), “Flyboys” introduces its squadron the old-fashioned way: with character-establishing setups.
Blaine Rawlings (Franco) is a grinning third-generation Texas rancher facing foreclosure and arrest; William Jensen (Winchester) is a jut-jawed do-gooder eager to face the enemy, and confident of his return;
Eugene Skinner (Salis) is an African-American who’s come to France to box and to get away from the bigotry back home, and so on.
Overseeing the volunteers is Captain Thenault, played with winking panache by the great Jean Reno.
Reno arches his brow, sneers imperiously at the inexperienced pilots and waddles around in a trim French military uniform with a round, boxy cap. But, as we come to discover (as if we
didn’t already know), Thenault is really a nice guy, and he really cares about his men. Even the ones who aren’t French.
Up in the sky, where “Flyboys” goes twice or thrice more often than necessary (the film is long), the Escadrille encounters the “Black Falcon,” a German ace with a Snidely Whiplash smile.
Because the planes fly at low altitudes in close proximity, nose-diving and spiraling above the countryside and because most shots of the actors in their planes were shot on green-screen soundstages it is possible to see the whites of the airmen’s eyes.
And also the glint of evil.
The Black Falcon is very glinty.
“Flyboys,” which was actually shot in England, also stars Jennifer Decker as the French farm girl Lucienne whom Rawlings meets and woos between air battles and other manly exercises back at HQ. Lucienne’s English is as nonexistent as Rawlings’ French, but they take to each other and to their English-French pocket dictionaries.
Steven Rea
The Philadelphia Inquirer
