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Flyboys

Review By: Jason Zencka
JasonZencka@TheCinemaSource.com

In the event that I do something heroic with my life, I pray it's something mundane, even banal. Something profoundly uncinematic, like, say, treating my wife the way she deserves to be treated, or raising a kind, thoughtful child, or gainfully contributing to a good woman being elected to political office.

If I absolutely must perform some Herculean feat of bravery, some gonzo, high-altitude, explosion-laden sacrifice of Homeric proportions, I certainly hope Tony Bill, director of Flyboys doesn't find out about it.

Flyboys, which opens today, is Mr. Bill's account of the true-ish story of the Lafayette Escadrille, a French squadron of American bi-plane pilots that volunteer for service in the First World War before President Wilson declared it the war to end all others. It's the kind of film that will doubtless be touted, in a sly turn of marketing doublespeak, as "epic," an adjective that likely refers to it having filled some unspoken quota of production dollars-spent, historical events-referenced, supporting characters-immolated, or screenwriters-credited. In actuality, Flyboys is a bland, overstuffed cheeseburger of a film, both tumorously long and surpassingly schmaltzy, and ultimately neither good nor bad enough to be particularly interesting.

The film stars James Franco, who seems to have been forcefully relegated to the nether-regions of box-office visibility in recent years, headlining such dubious projects as Annapolis, Tristan and Isolde, and The Great Raid.

Watching Franco skulk around in B-movie purgatory is a disappointing venture. His career got a jump-start on the television show Freaks and Geeks playing Daniel Desario, a 80's era Terry Malloy with a hearty, misanthropic charisma. Like Malloy, Desario was a real gem of a character, both scuffed and strikingly handsome, marginal and iconic, a well-intentioned high school bruiser whose conscience was as commanding and unreliable as the growls of the cars he tried to fix. To say that there was a time when Franco could have been a contender would be a cliché, but it's probably the cliché he deserves.

Here, as with most of his recent roles, Franco seems to use the singular momentum of his Freak image to propel his character through all the slow curves of a formulaic screenplay. Most scenes, he's just a face, albeit a notably pretty one. As the rough-and-tumble, cowboy dogfighter with dead parents and a big heart, he never really rises from his pastiche of a back-story. His cohort, a motley crew of American misfits (a Harvard drop-out, a baby-faced would-be-bank robber, a Good Black Man), prove similarly confined.

The supporting leads seem to suffer from the same career rigor mortis that plagues Franco. The French actor Jean Reno, playing the boys' droll Battalion leader, seems determined on manfully reducing his stature as a fine actor in his own right to being known as That French Guy. Martin Henderson, playing the battle-weary ace with aspirations of a Hemingway-styled state of resignation, seems