OK, so I’m a sucker for movies like this. This is a well made war movie. It’s fairly by-the-book in nature, but it does manage to take a couple unexpected turns amidst the more genre standard elements. I suppose some of those unexpected elements are a result of this being based on true events and characters. There’s one thing about the ending that I totally didn’t expect, which I’m sure is only there because it came from the historical facts. It’s the kind of reality that a Hollywood screenwriter would rarely put into a film like this. As a whole, this is a very well produced, acted, paced and even well writting film. The character arcs are drawn out rather well. The story is certainly interesting, if not completely original. There are many ways in which this film is superior to many of the films of the genre, particularly in the way it undercuts some of the cliche trappings of the genre - like not making the commanding officers overbearing jerks. Another great thing about this film is the World War I setting, rather than World War II which tends to dominated the war movie genre. Frankly, I find the realm of air combat in World War I quite fascinating. The film points out the many primitive aspects of those first air combats - carrying hammers to hit the guns with when they jam, carrying a gun so you can shoot yourself rather than burning to death in the plane or otherwise experience going down with the aircraft (for lack of a parachute to allow a pilot to punch out), and so on. It was these first fighter pilots that modeled the techniques to be used for years and years to follow.

There have been so few movies made about this, at least recently. The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles is one of the only quasi-recent things that comes to mind - and don’t get me wrong, that excellent series did some marvelous WWI material. One can look further back to the small number of films about WWI air combat - like the well made film The Blue Max. Go back further and there are some examples like Howard Hughes’ Hell’s Angels. But Flyboys is able to really take advantage of some very impressive modern production and effects techniques. I must say that I was very impressed with the production. I kinda expected to be impressed, since the trailers showed off some of the most impressive footage - though there’s plenty more to be found that isn’t in the trailers. The cast does a nice job, and I really have no complaints related to performance. In fact, James Franco actually turns in a rather good performance. And hey, Jean Reno is such an easy, and perfect choice for his command role. The one aspect of this film that I will knock a bit is Trevor Rabin’s music score. It’s not particularly awful, and it has some good moments to be sure, but when you look back at the amazing music scores that the other productions I mentioned above had, it’s hard to ignore the missed opportunity they had to get some amazing music for the film. Jerry Goldsmith’s score to The Blue Max is absolutely amazing. Joel McNeely & Laurence Rosenthal did excellent work on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. I would love to have seen them choose somebody like McNeely for this film. Or other composers that would have done an amazing job on it like Michael Giacchino, Christopher Young, James Horner, Marco Beltrami, John Powell or many others. Heck, pull the grossly underappreciated Bruce Broughton out of the made-for-TV-movie world and get him back on big budget features like this. Ah well, enough ranting of a film score fanatic.

I consider Brian De Palma to be a hit-or-miss kinda director. There are many things he’s great at, and he has directed a number of brilliant films. He’s also directed a number of lemons as well. Then there are ones like Snake Eyes, which is excellent for the first half and sucks in the second half. In other words, he’s had all manner of mixed success. Well, this is another one to chalk up as a mixed success. While I liked this one better than Snake Eyes overall, it’s still got problems. Like any of his great or his lesser films, this movie looks amazing. De Palma’s finely crafted visual sense is in full effect for this movie, and his brilliance with long, deliberate takes on scenes is excellent yet again. There’s some brilliantly staged stuff to be found in this movie. Now, I have to admit that I had little more than a basic familiarity with the notorious story this film is based on. Or, actually, that the book this movie is based on, is, uh, based on. While the cast is full of impressive actors, they are left adrift a bit trying to figure out what to do, and it kinda shows on screen a bit. Josh Hartnett, who has a talent for films of this period in history, manages to keep things together rather well. Aaron Eckhart, who’s easily one of Hollywood’s most undervalued acting treasures, gets a role that is all over the map, but he also manages to hold things together well enough. Scarlett Johansson gets a rather thankless role, despite getting to look great doing it. It’s Hilary Swank who gets to steal all the scenes, getting one of the more interesting characters.

Ultimately, this movie falls down worst in terms of scripting. It’s not that it’s stupid scripting. Actually, it’s almost the direct opposite. This movie is insanely complicated and muddled. It’s full of characters, situations and strange behavior that is blended together into such a dense set of scenes and events that I actually had trouble keeping up with what was going on, and why. During the end credits, I could hear more than one person explaining the movie to people they were with who completely failed to follow it. I’d probably do better on a second viewing, I suppose. It’s just a lot to take in, particularly when presented so lavishly with such aggressive writing. It just doesn’t quite mesh together well enough to make it completely engaging. One thing is for sure, as a film score fan and absolute fanatic of composer Jerry Goldsmith, I almost got chills during certain moments of this movie when composer Mark Isham nearly channelled Goldsmith into his music score. I have to imagine it was the result of them temp tracking the film with Goldsmith’s scores to films like LA Confidential or Chinatown.