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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with WILLIAM HALL
Published: 31 May 2007

Rebellious Texan ‘Rawlings’ (James Franco) heads for the clouds in Tony Bill’s charming tale of derring-do

Chocks away for soaring stuff

FLYBOYS
Directed by Tony Bill
Certificate 12a

HERE they come, swooping out of the sky like a swarm of maddened mosquitoes, bullets whining in a blaze of noise and confusion.
These are the First World War bi-planes piloted by the Flyboys, a bunch of young US daredevils who in 1916 volunteered to fight for the élite French Lafayette Escadrille air squadron several months before America officially signed on for duty.
We join up with the first dozen enlisting at an airfield in Verdun run by the tough-as-nails captain (Jean Reno, dominating every scene he’s in) reminding the raw recruits that their life expectancy is six weeks, maximum.
The eager-beaver lads are led by a rebellious Texan (James Franco) along with Cavalry officer’s son (Philip Winchester), a rookie kid with something to prove to his disciplinarian father (Todd Boyce).
They get a taste of things to come when the captain hands each of them a loaded pistol when they take to the skies with the encouraging words: “You can die in three ways: either burn to death if your plane catches fire, crash headlong – or take the painless way out!”
The boys are in open cockpits – with no parachutes. Apparently planes were more important for the top brass to save than young lives when it came to the crunch.
One by one the newcomers die for the cause. The Gemans have their own fearsome Red Baron ace up there too, dubbed the Black Falcon (Gunner Winbergh) from the insignia on his plane, and he’s the bad guy the survivors will have to take on in the thrilling climax.
The digitally-inspired dogfights are a chaos of disintegrating planes and bullet-riddled fuselages, and feel close enough to the real thing to provide genuine palm-moistening moments.
This is rousing Boy’s Own paper stuff, directed with a disarmingly old-fashioned panache by Tony Bill.
There’s no real depth of character – but who cares when those marvellous bi-planes are soaring into the skies in the early dawn for another deafening aerial battle?
I didn’t.

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