Flyboys

The subject is the American pilots who volunteered for the French army before the United States entered the war: the Lafayette Escadrille. Formed in 1916, the unit was real, and most of the men in it had no flying experience. The interesting part is the conditions of the period. First World War pilots were not issued parachutes; the aircraft were wood and fabric, the engines caught fire, and average survival was measured in weeks. The film shows this without exaggerating it. No studio would back the film. A group of investors including producer Dean Devlin and David Ellison, son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, put more than sixty million dollars of their own money into making and marketing it. Ellison also appears in the film. The result was brutal: released by MGM on 22 September 2006, it took $17.8m worldwide. Variety named it one of the ten biggest box-office flops of the year. James Franco leads, with Jean Reno as the unit's French commander and Martin Henderson as one of the pilots. Tony Bill directed. Who it is for: viewers who want aerial combat and a rarely filmed front of the First World War. Who it is not for: anyone after character depth. The cast stays at the level of types, the romantic subplot is forced, and the computer effects were criticised even at the time.