Enough already. The time has come for CGI to be put verifiably beyond use. It’s one thing to place such chicanery in the service of a Brechtian comic-book universe. The snow-crashed hyper-reality of Sin City or 300 works just fine, thank you. But outside this niche, blue screen is deader than Elvis. Spend $200 million dollars on SFX and, odds are, you’ll end up with soulless, plot-free drivel like Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End. Spend significantly less cash and you’ll wind up with Flyboys, a plodding First World War saga that couldn’t be less epic if it tried.
Devising a movie around aerial dogfights and pointless bloodshed, then failing to land a single emotional glove-slap, takes some doing. But Flyboys quickly squanders its dramatic potential. As the action opens, it’s 1916 and a group of young American pilots have volunteered for duty in Verdun, France. War is adventure, you dig? James Franco is the rebel hero. Abdul Salis is the black guy who must overcome racial prejudice. Martin Henderson is the old hand ace-pilot who skulks about with a pet lion unconvincingly rendered in a blur of pixels. Jean Reno is the Gallic commanding officer with a heart of gold. Big-eyed orphan ragamuffins can’t be far behind. Oh wait, there they are.
On the opposing side we find a honourable German and his ludicrously evil countryman known as – oh no! – The Black Falcon. With equal inevitability, Mr. Franco falls for a local girl who, in common with the rest of the cast, seems to be wearing clothes recently purchased from French Connection.
As the numbers thin out over an interminable running time, we scarcely notice, let alone care. But as thinly drawn and cliché bound as this is, it might just have cut it as a pilot for a WW1 Band Of Brothers if it didn’t look so terribly thrown together. Unhappily, the editing displays a scant regard for continuity. And Hammy the Hamster has flown more convincingly than the cartoonish aerial action here.
Most of us would love to see more movies about the Great War. Flyboys reminds us to be careful what we wish for.
Not to be confused with Paths Of Glory.
Or Block-Heads even.