Product: Flyboys [Blu-ray] (2006)
Rating: 4.0
Knights of the air
Highly entertaining movie. There's action, romance, tragedy, comedy....The historical purists will cry foul at the historical inaccuracies, but for the most part, those inaccuracies were intentional---in order to make the film a little more accessible for viewers who haven't spent years studying WWI aviation. I spotted several "ooh, that's not right!" moments, but in the end, they didn't take away from my enjoyment of the film.The CGI dogfights are well-done, in my opinion. Would it have been better if they had used real planes? You bet! Would using real planes have been a realistic objective? NO! Those old planes were dangerous as heck when they were brand new, and even modern reproduction methods haven't done much to reduce the risk. Put 40 or 50 planes in the air at once and try to choreograph a dogfight---someone's gonna die. And not all of those original pilots died in combat. There were shockingly high numbers of men killed due to engine failure and other mechanical failures. If you use CGI, you can eliminate most of the risk, plus you can get more realistic with crates catching fire, breaking up in mid-air,crashing, etc.The extras on the 2-disc DVD are pretty extensive, cover the making of the movie, and address some of the gaps between the film and the true history.