I should stay from the start that while this wasn’t a particularly great film or, hell, even a particularly good one, it’s probably the most satisfying movie I’ve seen since perhaps Snakes on a Plane. I appreciate a movie that delivers on exactly what I think I’m going to get and does it exactly the way I want it to.
I’m a really big fan of war movies, especially of the two World Wars (although there are surprisingly few movies about WWI, which is sort of sad). Amelia and I have discussed this many times over, but what makes WWI and WWII movies so great is that the Germans are such a fantastic enemy. They always have it completely together for about 95% of the movie; they’re cold, cool, efficient killers. Heck, they’ve even got colour schemes that command a startling presence; the first time those red triplanes showed up on screen you couldn’t help but go “Whoa.” They dare you to fuck with them, which of course makes it all the more satisfying when they get completely pwned.
They play in stereotypes, of course, but it ends up on a comic level that makes it more amusing than offensive in any way. There’s always the one Big Bad German™ who takes out half your squadron and who the hero gets to kill in the end. This movie’s Big Bad German™ was named The Falcon and he flew a completely bad ass black triplane with — you guessed it — a falcon insignia painted on the side. The Falcon was responsible for killing every last friend of the vetran pilot in the squad, so naturally the vetran pilot had an axe to grind and you knew it was his life mission to take The Falcon down. So there’s this one scene where they’ve got to take down this zeppelin that’s on it’s way to bomb Paris and the planes are all zipping around and you just know the vetran pilot is going to die heroically in this scene, it’s just a matter of how. Then you wonder “Where the hell is The Falcon?” and they show this cheese-ass overhead shot above the zeppelin and a set of black wings slowly comes on screen and you just die because you know exactly what it is and who he’s going to [try to] kill. Bwahaha.
The movie unfolded pretty predictably; actually, it was rather obscene how predictable it was. Half the time I was able to whisper to Audrey “Okay, this is what’s going to happen next” and 99% of the time it did, exactly as I said it would. I think the only thing we got wrong was that James Franco didn’t get the girl in the end — due to an inability to find each other after the war, not because they weren’t In Love™ — but we didn’t predict that because we weren’t nearly as interested in the love story as we were everything else.
The dogfights really are spectacular and it shows you how insane WWI pilots had to be. CANVAS PLANES. These things were swiss cheese in a matter of seconds, how do you even fly something like that? Insane. And everything is made better by the presence of an exploding zeppelin.
Costuming: a pilot’s leather trench coat and those awesome hats and goggles are totally hot. And they got to wear completely awesome boots. Even those scarves were sort of awesome. Everytime they’d go get ready to fly, Audrey and I would sort of sigh contentedly.
Also? There’s this one character who they suspect is a spy because he’s got a shady background and can’t shoot on target. The truth about him comes out, he’s not a spy, everyone is at ease, and in a situation where desperate times call for desperate measures, James Franco has to chop off his hand. But wait, it gets better. They’re going out to fly the final mission of the film and the guy comes running out waving his arm in the air and shows James Franco … THE HOOK HE HAS FASHIONED FOR HIMSELF. HE FLIES A PLANE WITH A HOOK. A HOOK. Naturally, it’s only after he uses the hook to aid him in firing his guns that he actually hits his target and he yells at the German, who is going down in flames, “WATCH OUT FOR THE HOOK!!!” OMGLKJASD:JIWLIJ.