Product: Flyboys [Blu-ray] (2006)
Rating: 1.0
A Huge Opportunity Wasted...
With due respect to Monty's review, as a big WWI history enthusiast myself, this movie is absolute garbage. Which is a shame, because all of the elements were there to make the best WWI aviation movie in history, and instead, they made this crud. Who was the historical advisor on this one? Paris Hilton maybe? No, wait, she could've done better.Where to start? Fokker triplanes at the end of 1916? Nope, that was later. Five thousand Fokker triplanes, all painted brilliant red, with crosses all over them, even on the upper surfaces of the lower wings? Nope. A zeppelin raid in broad daylight with a triplane escort? Nope. Close up views of the smallish looking Neuports that show the brakes on the backs of the wheels? That's plain stupid. Brits, Frenchies, and Americans all operating off the same airfield and sharing airplanes no less? Nope. Enough time between missions for pilots to apparently take week long vacations through the countryside? Nope and stupid. A German aerodrome occupied apparently only by one pilot and one little guy to salute him? Wierd and dopey. One lion, not two? What happened to "Soda"?That's the short list, there's much, much more. This movie's about as historically accurate as Pearl Harbor was a few years back, where Ben Afflack single-handedly won WWII. They even have a wonderful CG'd version of the Aquitania bringing the Americans over to France, but dash it all, the Aquitania was serving as a hospital/troop ship at that time.Add to all this a very poor and pointless love story with an illiterate French woman. What was the point of that? Again, all the ingredients were here to make an outstanding movie, and these guys made something so mind-numbingly poor that any military history buff is going to be disgusted with the missed opportunity. It's got some great visual effects, but so did Independence Day, and in the end, Independence Day was more believable than Flyboys.This movie is just painfully stupid. Will there never be a movie capable of matching THE BLUE MAX as the best WWI flying movie ever made? Save your money, buy THE BLUE MAX, and enjoy a realistic story with REAL airplanes doing REAL flying, and not a bunch of computer generated Fokkers moving like they're F-16s.