Flyboys (2006)

Director: Tony Bill

Writers: Phil Sears, Blake T. Evans, David S. Ward

Composer: Trevor Rabin

Starring: James Franco, Scott Hazell, Mac McDonald, Philip Winchester, Todd Boyce, Karen Ford, Ruth Bradley, Abdul Salis, Jean-Philippe Ecoffey, Tim Pigott-Smith, Tyler Labine, Gail Downey, David Ellison, Jean Reno

More info: IMDb

Tagline:  Inspired by a true story

Plot:  The adventures of the Lafayette Escadrille, young Americans who volunteered for the French military before the U.S. entered World War I, and became the country's first fighter pilots.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

The aerial dogfights elevate this by the numbers, war cliche of a film.  It feels like a throwback to the films of the second world war but those at least have some charm when viewing them today.  Taking that vibe and dropping it into a contemporary film, albeit one set a hundred years ago, is difficult to pull off and FLYBOYS doesn't make it work.  They tried.  The romance stuff fares poorer than the rest of the film with the plane fights taking the cake for the best parts of the film.  Fortunately there are a lot of aerial scenes.  Some actors can pull off corny, cliche'd dialogue and some can't.  You'll find mostly the latter in this picture.  It's a shame that there are so few WWI action movies from the past hundred years.  The MGM DVD has a nice anamorphic widescreen image and the only extras are a commentary with the director Tony Bill and producer Dean Devlin and four trailers for films that aren't this one.