Flyboys
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Movie Reviews of Flyboys
Movie Review: Good Exciting Adventure Film.
Summary: 3 Stars
Flyboys is a film about American volunteer aviators during the first World War before America declared war on Germany in April 1917. The movie is action packed and exciting as far as the special effects. Hollywood is long over do for a Good WWI aviation film and this is an area where I would like to see more movies about considering WWI Aviation is my hobby.
Hollywood does a descent job with historical accuracy however I did find some errors in it. But if you are looking for a good film to watch for excitement and adventure then this is a good pick. If you don't care about historical accuracies, stopreading now. :-)
Some of the historical inaccuracies I found were: 1) The French Neuport 17 biplanes had rotory engines, not radial engines. Rotory engines were round like radials but spun on the camshaft with the propeller. I believe the Neuports used a 80 horse power Le Rhone engine. The rotory engines in early and mid WWI had two speeds, on and off. 2) The German Fokker DR1 triplanes did not enter the war until August of 1917 when the Flyboys would have been flying SPAD VII. The movie should have depicted either Halberstadt DII or Albatros DII and DIII. Fokker Eindeckers (monoplanes) were near the end of thier life span in mid to late 1916 when this story is depicted. 3) Maneuvers pulled by the fragile Neuports depicted in the film would have ripped the upper wings off which was a weakness of the Neuport series, especially pulling out of deep dives. 4) Not every German Fokker DR1 was all red. Manfred von Richtofen, the Red Baron flew an all red fokker DR1 and was killed in one but even the Red Baron fly non-all red triplanes from time to time. Although squadrons usually keep to the squadrons markings some German pilots of certain rank and/or number of kills could mark their planes with their own personal markings. 5) The straight (latin) cross on the German Fokkers did not come to being until March 1918, long after the dis-banning of the Lafayette Escadrille. 6) Where is there mention of Raoul Lufbery and William Thaw two of America's first aces and early members of the Escadrille? 7) From my research I have not found where the Lafayette Escadrille brought down a German Zepplin....I'll keep researching.
But again as a film to watch for action, Flyboys meets the bill. And as mentioned in other reviews Hollywood did get some things right histoical.
Movie Review: Entertaining but disappointing
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm sorry to say that I don't share the enthusiasm of the previous reviewers for this film. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a bad film, it just wasn't that great either. I agree that the fight scenes were very well done and exciting to watch, but other than that, I was very disappointed. I found the acting to be mediocre and the tone of the film was somewhat cheesy, I thought. I was expecting a serious war film in the category of 'Saving Private Ryan', but what I witnessed was more similar to Jerry Bruckheimer's 'Pearl Harbor.' It is more of a "feel-good" war movie, than a realistic one. Don't get me wrong, the film had it's moments, but it just wasn't what I expected. So if you just want to be entertained for a couple hours, I could think of plenty of worse movies, but if you're expecting an epic war film, 'Flyboys' is not it.Movie Review: Curse you, Tony Bill!
Summary: 1 Stars
"The first WWI aviation film in 40 years", so director Tony Bill reported gloats in a recent interview. Actually, "30" would present a more accurate figure, considering the 1976 release of the JAck Gold's "Aces High", but no bother. I needn't fret about Bill's lack of affinity for cinematic history; his readily apparent ineptitude in both the historical and technical departments is bad enough.
Talk about ineptitude (among other things), this supposed homage to an actual WWI squadron perpetuates just about every conceivable cliché imaginable, furthermore effectively stealing elements from nearly every aviation flick ever devised, including Blue Max, the Dawn Patrol, Dark Blue World, the Tuskegee Airmen, and even that age-old silent flick from 1927, WINGS. Furtherome, the battle scenes themselves reflect the most cheesy elements of propaganda war flicks, culminating in the endless ranks of snarling villains, the cheering crowds on the ground below as our heroes intercept the strafing Huns to save the day, and even a veritable race against the proverbial clock to destroy a German airship before it supposedly "obliterates" the entirety of Paris.
And as of the various manners in which this film blatantly exhibits its readily apparent lack of prowess for historical and technical accuracies, let me count the ways.
For starters, let's consider the countless manners in which the on-screen aircraft repeatedly defy the laws physics. Admittedly, some reviewers have pointed out Tony Bill's part-time profession as an aerobatic pilot, which in essence appears to compromised his interpretations of World War I combat, as he seems to have derived his perception of first world war fighters from having logged too many hours in Pitts Special as opposed to having derived genuine insight into the performance capabilities and limitations of such elaborate contusions of fabric and wood. For one thing, the aircraft exhibit speeds twice in excess that of the actual performance capabilities of World War I aircraft, culminating in a host of physical implausibilities as overly efficient climbing characteristics as if instigated in the absence of a stall barrier, low-level maneuvers that would have invariably either stalled the aircraft or resulted in considerable wing shear, not to mention that these biplanes and Triplanes exhibit phenomenal roll-rates which no multi-winged aircraft on the planet could possibly emulate. Evidently, Tony Bill exhibits an accurate conception of three dimensional space, but not of the actual performance characteristics of First World War-era fighters.
Furthermore, the movie's glaring affinity for historical inaccuracy reflects the presence of numerous aircraft that never existed during the Escardrille's 1916 escapades, including the SE.5, Handley Page 400, Gotha IV, and of course the Fokker Dr. 1 Triplane, which brings me to another issue that drives me out of my mind, culminating in one of the most trivial misinterpretations about World War I aviation. Bottom line, the above depiction stems from a trivial and widespread popular misconception that by default associates World War One German aircraft with countless formations of red-coated Triplanes, as if the Germans had somehow managed to perpetuate endless clones of Von Richtofen, to say nothing about the fact that the Fokker Dr. 1 was ultimately produced in insignificant numbers, culminating in an actual production run of only 160 examples.
In fact, the Lafayette Escabdrille fought the majority of its pitched-battles against outmoded Fokker E.III Eindeckers and two-seat Albatross and Aviatik observation scouts, the superior equipment of the Amercans frequently offset by their readily apparent lack of experience.
And another thing, the average life expectancy of a World War I pilot is actually confined to the space of a single week, unlike the film's more optimistic projection of 3 to 6. Furthermore, somebody should remind the screenwriters never to emphasizes the virtues of German aircraft by citing the presence of all powerful engines, as the rates of horsepower which the Germans managed to conceive lagged considerably behind that of their allied counterparts.
Furthermore, pilots were indeed NOT permitted to instill their own personal insignias, considering that, unlike World War II, rarely were aircrew assigned individual aircraft, often dispersing their ranks among the types available in a manner that typically resulted sharing planes out amongst each other. Furthermore, as blatantly misrepresnted by the closing scene, there is simply no such thing as rejoining one's formation in the event of finalizing an aerial skirmish, as aircraft frequently fought pitched battles at length, scattering miles away from each other, thus relaying each pilot with the burden of utilizing landmarks and navigations skills as the sole means for finding their way home on an individual basis.
Reverting to the film's one and only redeeming feature, the various aspects in which the Flyboys attempts to model battle damage in conjunction with the various behaviors of shedding wings and burning engines bear a more accurate depiction than the remainder of the film. However, given the all too elaborate staging of such sequences through an over use of Green Screen techninques in conjunction with an overabundance of CGI effectively renders the overall appearance as reminiscent of, as one reviewer stated "playing a really cool video game" as opposed to providing a genuine "in the cockpit" sensation for the expreiences of piloting such frail machinations.
Most offensive, however, is the gratuitous manner in which the movie concocts the entire spectacle within a fanciful dressing of glamour, all the while pedaling it's pretensions for historical and physical accuracy.
In all fairness, perhaps I should lend Tony Bill an additional bone by citing the best moment of the entire movie, in which the guts of that blabbering Christian fanatic splatters the entirety of his instrument panel (the only moment in the entire film in which I cheered).
Ultimately, the inclusion of a photograph of the actual members of the Lafayette Escadrille seems like a cruel joke, as if the preceding spectacle of cartoonish escapism somehow culminates in an authentic tribute to the squadron in question.
Considering the shear sparsity of world war one related aviation flicks, it doesn't take a genius to brand this endeavor as by far the worst ever conceived.
For more informative and productive viewing, I can recommend virtually every other aviation flick on the market, from the veritable classics like "Blue Max" and "Aces High" , to some of the more lukewarm efforts of "Ace of Aces" and "Von Richtofen and Brown".