Saturday, September 16, 2006

Into thin air


An MGM release opening this Friday, Flyboys, is meant to play exactly like an MGM release that might have opened in September 1936. The difference is that moviemakers then weren't striving to make "old-fashioned" films; the medium was too new for that. This movie, from journeyman director-for-hire Tony Bill and once-hot producer Dean Devlin (who chilled considerably after the useless Americanized Godzilla picture), assumes that audiences like to be bored into submission by exciting true-life stories (in this case, the Lafayette Escadrille flying aces of World War I) that have been very blandly fictionalized and presented with agonizing reverence, as if the screenings were going to be held in churches and not multiplexes. Memo: Audiences didn't flock to see, say, 1938's The Dawn Patrol or 1965's The Blue Max for stone-faced lectures on warfare, racism, or class and county distinctions. They went for the stars, the sex (in the 1965 movie, anyway), and the dogfights. Of these, Flyboys has only the third, and not enough airborne footage to justify a two hour-plus running time.

The photo comes from the best of the battle sequences, where the "flyboys"--who are helping the French cause before America entered the Great War--take on a marauding German zeppelin. It's a beautifully rendered, exciting sequence, that might really take off in Imax 3D...but note the use of the word "rendered," as in computer-generated. The flying scenes in this picture are all at workstation level; you never really feel like you're up in the air with the characters, but back in Keanu Reeves' matrix, which has been reprogrammed to simulate France 90 years ago*. The older pictures used models and mattes for their in-air action--they may not be as "convincing" as digital effects but they feel built, and more substantial.

It helps, too, that the airmen were made of flesh-and-blood, and not cardboard. Read about the Lafayette Escadrille here. Interesting, no? There's a whole movie in the story of Eugene Bullard, the black "flyboy," but I wouldn't trust these filmmakers to do this fascinating American life justice--the Bullard character here represents nothing more than a black guy whose noble supporting-part presence everyone else must learn to accept. James Franco, Hollywood's go-to guy for stiff historical pictures when Colin Farrell is unavailable, plays the lead, who befriends and beds a refugee when on the ground; as the squadron leader, Jean Reno plays Jean Reno. No one else makes the slightest impression. "Old-fashioned" is not synonymous for "dull"--we love those Turner Classic Movies movies for their spark and zest, two qualities not much in evidence in Flyboys.

*Flyboys is curiously out of time. I remember being annoyed with another flying picture, 1986's Iron Eagle, which pushed Reagan-era propaganda on its audience. Flyboys has no agenda. It's as apolitical as it is ahistorical, and its appeal would appear limited for anyone who is not a World War I buff to begin with--and those History Channel watchers will object to the liberties taken. Why was this picture made?

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