Product: Flyboys [Blu-ray] (2006)
Rating: 3.0
Watchable World War One Dogfight Movie
There's something both romantic and intimidating about the mechanized slaughter that plagued Europe at the beginning of the 20th century during what that generation called 'the GREAT War' and we call World War One. While French and Germans were slaughtering each other on the ground by the millions with the help of first generation tanks, early model machine guns and clouds of mustard gas, some privileged few were confronting their enemies in the air, riding on small, fragile, underpowered but deadly airplanes, trying to obliterate opponents riding the same or protecting/attacking bomb-carrying larger, motorized flying machines or giant, bloated, terror-inspiring airships.It's a historical fact that a handful of American took sides in this battle at a time their own country, the United States, was officially neutral. They decided to help the French side by forming their own Escadrille Lafayette of flying knights. The Escadrille, famous for its bravery AND its partying while off duty, distinguished itself at Verdun and many of its members were recognized as Aces, some receiving valuable French medals for bravery.The movie attempts to follow, to the extent that a fiction movie can, the historical record. We see the initial members as they make their decision to fight for France, we watch them train and then we watch them fight the Germans. It's fighter vs. fighter, fighter attacking the enemy's bombers, fighter protecting their own bombers, fighter attacking the Zeppelin and fighter strafing the enemy air base and, on several occasions, we watch air duels between Aces on either side. In addition, there is some romance, a tiny bit of racial tension and we watch some personal problems as they are dealt with by the squad's members.This is a very visual, CGI enhanced to the point of almost cartoonish-looking movie when it comes to the numerous dogfight scenes and its most attractive feature is the air battles. The scruffy and fragile-looking French fighters, the intimidating, red-colored German Fokkers, the bombers, the Zeppelin, they all look spectacular in ways that only today's video enhancement technologies can produce. One may conclude that, maybe there's too much fighting and too little character development but this is not a psychological drama. It's about aerial fighting and this is what we get to see in a movie that comes pretty close to being a WW1 documentary. All the little conflicts between the squad's members or between them and the French military or the other American volunteers are insignificant when viewed within the context of the war against the Germans.The movie is good at what it attempts to deliver - in this case, the dogfights - but, after a while, the fighting gets repetitive and the movie seems to be stretching a bit too long. This is as close to a pure dogfight action movie as it gets.Recommended as a rental or even as a keeper for any lover of war action videos.P.S. While many of the details are fictionalized enhancements or pure inventions, it is historically true that the squadron had lions as pets. The movie shows us one. In fact, they had TWO lion cubs named Whiskey and Soda.