Flyboys – Helden der Lüfte (2006)

Flyboys – Helden der Lüfte: Directed by Tony Bill. With James Franco, Scott Hazell, Mac McDonald, Philip Winchester. 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.

“When I first saw the previews and read the synopsis, I was expecting a horrible film like Pearl Harbor. Fighter pilots in love with a girl. Happily the love story is not sappy or sickening and actually helps create character development. And how the love story ends is a very nice non-Hollywood ending.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe Planes look magnificent, but could have been done better. The use of German Dr1u0026#39;s (the Fokker Triplanes) as the only German fighter is understandable as distinguishing friend from foe. However, making all of the Dr1u0026#39;s (except for the main villains ) solid red is extremely annoying. While it is up to some discussion if the Red Baronu0026#39;s Dr1 was all red or mostly red, it does not mean that all Dr1u0026#39;s were red, especially all red. The Dr1u0026#39;s came from the Fokker factory usually in an olive drab paint scheme with a light blue underside. The film makers could have added a red scheme to the planes but left a portion olive drab and blue underside, it still would have made the Germans distinctive without being clones of Manfred von Rictoffen.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe dogfights are fun to watch and are fairly exciting, however the planes fly highly unrealistically at times. Overall the CGI is excellent but at times it is noticeable as CGI. The planes that explode (Explosions are such a Hollywood staple 🙂 ) are unrealistic. The planes are traveling 70 t0 100 miles per hour in reality, but the explosions react as if the plane is standing still, going up in a ball instead of being spread along the doomed planeu0026#39;s path.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOver all it was fun to watch and covers a historical period that has long been neglected in film.”