Flyboysgoes down in flames, writes Donald Clarke
WHEN Ernest Thesiger, the studiously camp character actor, returned from the first World War, a friend asked in a caring voice what the experience was like. "Oh my dear," Thesiger replied. "The noise! And the people!"
Having endured two hours and 20 minutes of Flyboys, an insulting, moronically anachronistic adventure concerning the American contribution to that part of the Great War fought in the air, I begin to understand what the star of Bride of Frankenstein was getting at.
If Tony Bill's wretched debacle is to be believed, the airfields of Europe were, in those grim years, swamped with hugely toothed cretins dressed in clothes that would not become fashionable - or, indeed, available - for another 50 years.
Early on, Jean Reno, displaying levels of hyper-Frenchness rarely encountered beyond the set of 'Allo 'Allo, informs his new recruits that the lifespan of the average pilot can be measured in weeks. Audience members could, at this point, be forgiven for raising a little cheer.
Such celebrations would be premature. Rather unfairly, Bill, hitherto a director of television, decides to knock off the only potentially interesting character in the first half hour. Fans of Bachelors Walk, the popular RTÉ television series, need not rub their eyes when the hopeful pilots first emerge from the train. That is, indeed, the fine Keith McErlean - Barry from that show - with the slicked-back hair and the sober eye.
What caring god would allow Barry to perish while permitting James Franco's tediously bland cowboy to soar unharmed towards a happy future? No wonder so many combatants lost their faith in the conflagration.
Still, the early demise of Flight Lieutenant Barry is among the lesser offences to be laid against Flyboys. When George Lucas first screened Star Wars for the executives, he famously inserted archive footage of dogfights where the duelling space ships would be.
Bill's idiotic film might be regarded as an exact complement to that strange entity. What we have here is a (bad) first World War drama interrupted by absurd fight sequences in which screaming biplanes accomplish supersonic stunts that might strain the capabilities of the Millennium Falcon. And, my dears, the noise!
