Product: Flyboys [Blu-ray] (2006)
Rating: 3.0
Disappointing Suspension of Reality
How is it that Hollywood can take a naturally exciting real-life story, and ruin it? Such it is with Flyboys. Young American fighter pilots learning to fly and fighting for France in WWI before America joined the war - stuff of legends and a bottomless pit of real-life action adventure. All you have to do is tell the story with some reasonable acting, fly a few dogfights and a movie practically makes itself, right? After all, the movie is based on truth (inspired by...). But Hollywood has to push the Mission Implausible limits and add their own twists to the story that turn the average viewer with a brain into a head-shaking critic of their check on the realms of reality. The only thing unpredictable about this movie was the extent of implausibility they sometimes went to.Case in point - and take note this is a spoiler for one chapter of the story but this sums up the comic-book nature they pushed with this movie: A pilot gets shot down and crash-lands in the rugged and inhospitable small strip of no-man's land between the French and German sides who are actively shooting at each other. The hero of the story flies down low to check out his wingman (somehow avoiding getting shot down by the German ground troops himself). He sees the plane has flipped over and that his friend is trapped underneath. Next thing you know, the hero has landed his own plane (somewhere?) and is running between the flying bullets to rescue his wingman. Turns out the wingman's hand is trapped under the trailing edge of his plane's wing. The suspended reality keeps getting deeper as the intrepid rescuer (even with the help of a heroic French soldier) can not move the fragile aircraft (the tail of which one could easily lift with one hand - trust me I know). The hero, amid a hail of bullets, finds a trenching shovel and instead of breaking the fragile wood and fabric wing trapping his wingman's hand, he - well, you can probably guess the amazing bit of surgery he performs... So you get the idea.To be fair, if that kind of reality suspension doesn't bother you in a movie that is not meant to be likened to The Matrix, then you might enjoy it. The flight physics of the dogfights is actually depicted rather well (considering it's done by Hollywood) though it goes far beyond the performance capability of the planes at the time. There is not much real flying going on and the use of computer generated graphics is rather evident. I am an experienced fighter pilot and somewhat enjoyed the dogfights. Too bad they couldn't follow history enough to use the correct planes for the timeframe of the war but that's typical for Hollywood (and allows you to keep track of the good guys and bad guys more easily). The acting is not stellar but carries the story OK. The required French-girl love interest is attractive and believable.This movie could have done quite well if only they had put a check on their typical Hollywood push to go over the edge in action and suspense, thereby losing credibility and the viewer in the process.