Product: Flyboys [Blu-ray] (2006)
Rating: 3.0
Lots of Juice but Little Meat
As a drama, this film lacks a lot. The characters almost have depth, almost. The romance almost has depth, almost. The film almost has facts, almost. There is a lot of almost in this film, which is this movie's primary problem.The story is quite straightforward. A group of hot-blooded young lads head for France during The Great War to fly airplanes against Germany. One of the future pilots takes the Aquitania to Europe, which had to have been a bit of a challenge since the Aquitania was not in civilian service at the time.Once in France, the excitement builds as the young pilots fly against Fokker Triplanes, even though those planes did not enter the war until later, and then only in small numbers. The Fokker was notorious for being slow and occasionally falling apart because of a variety of problems. However, the Fokker had an excellent climb rate and was maneuverable. Baron Von Richthofen's plane was one of the few painted completely red. I understand that the choice of red was made to help tell the good guys from the bad guys.Skipping past all the historical inaccuracies, which this film boasts in abundance, the movie finally gets into two stories. There is a shallow love story and the dog fights. The love story is shallow because our two love birds have to develop this love story in between dog fights and the love story seemed to me to be a distraction to the rest of the story.The real heart of this movie is the dog fights. Boasting hundreds of CGI effects, this movie is a video game. Planes roar and fly with awesome-looking bullet effects. The zeppelin is a masterpiece, and one of the scenes on the zeppelin is a reprise of a similar scene used at least once, in the movie "The Rocketeer." I do not have sufficient knowledge of the aircraft used in World War I to know whether they could turn as well as the aircraft shown in this movie, but the turns did seem too tight to me, especially for the Fokker with its wing structural issues.So we get to see a series of scenes where the good guys and the bad guys fight each other in the skies over France. The good guys lose pilots and shoot down the bad guys, and the good guys are on the side of right and eventually they must have to gain some kind of moral victory.The biggest problem with this movie is lack of story. The backgrounds of the various characters and the nominal love story are merely doorways to get these characters into dogfights. I have seen this movie compared to "Top Gun," but though that movie had its own issues, the dogfight scenes were secondary to the conflicted character that Tom Cruise played. In this movie the dogfights are the entire reason for the movie, and everything else is secondary.On the other hand, the dogfight scenes are a blast to watch. If you have ever liked video games, especially flight simulator type games or war games, this movie brings those games to life. The special effects used to show the planes are phenomenal. The special effects provide the redeeming qualities of this movie and save it from being a two-star movie.Other reviews of this movie are quite polarized. However, the reason for the polarization is obvious. If you expect even a nominal attempt at accuracy, then this movie will likely be disappointing for you to watch. If you want to watch a movie about that is vaguely inspired by World War I dogfights and can wait for the movie to start showing them, then you will likely enjoy this movie.Good Luck!