Synopsis

In 1917, prior to the United States entering WW1, the Allied powers of France, England and Italy were on the ropes against the German juggernaut. Altruistic young Americans volunteered to fight alongside their counterparts in France. Some joined the infantry, others chose the Ambulance Corps. But 38 young men chose another path. They would learn how to fly. Their reasons for enlisting may have been different: Blaine Rawlings is searching for his purpose following the bank's foreclosure of his family ranch; Briggs Lowry is shamed into joining by his disciplinarian father; African American expatriate boxer Eugene Skinner vows to repay his debt to his adopted, racially-tolerant country. Under the command of French Captain Thenault and the leadership of American combat veteran Reed Cassidy, young American men took to the air everyday, risking their lives in their newly invented, mechanically imperfect aircraft, which were being used in combat for the first time against the formidable German aggressors.

What The Critics Say

"Gorgeously choreographed aerial photography and seamless visual effects give life, scope, exhilaration and danger to the action set-pieces." Dustin Putman THEMOVIEBOY "A majestic tribute to the Hollywood war films of yesteryear ... worth the price of admission for the amazing aerial dogfights alone." Edward Douglas COMINGSOON.NET "Tony Bill's Flyboys is an entertaining, old-fashioned adventure saga, employing new digital filmmaking to bring to life action-packed dogfights and the reckless derring-do of the earliest days of wartime flight." Jack Garner ROCHESTER DEMOCRAT CHRONICLE "This is spectacle in the grand old style, a bygone shot of adrenaline and grace." Amy Biancolli HOUSTON CHRONICLE "Spectacular.When it really takes off, it's undeniable fun." Pete Hammond MAXIM "The introduction is slow, but director Tony Bill can be forgiven some sluggishness thanks to the spectacle of his aerial footage." Forrest Hartman RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL

"Sometimes you just want to see pretty people in period costumes flying around in old-timey planes, swooning with impossible young love and screaming at the sky in rage." Brian Juergens FREEZE DRIED MOVIES "It's a 124-minute old-fashioned, John Wayne-type, feel good war movie. And what's wrong with that? I loved it." Tony Medley TONYMEDLEY.COM "The flying sequences are great fun, and there are a lot of them." Luke Y Thompson LYTRULES "The result guarantees a thrill a minute for all ages, and a few tears, too, in an old-fashioned kind of war movie with heart (in the best kind of tradition) that keeps you on the edge of your seat with your mouth wide open." Rex Reed NEW YORK OBSERVER "The aerial combat scenes are visually stunning." Robert Roten LARAMIE MOVIE SCOPE "Flyboys does an excellent job of re-creating the confusion, speed and peril of fighting in the clouds with machine guns mounted on rickety planes." Dave Tianen MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL

The Inside Story When "Independence Day" producer Dean Devlin first read the script for "Flyboys", he realized that no one had ever been able to make a film that truly did justice to the men who fought the dogfights of World War I. "I've never seen the kind of chaos in the sky that these people experienced," says Devlin. "I knew that using modern equipment and special effects to recreate another time, we could show how it happened, what it was really like for those extraordinary and brave young men." What little most know about the world's first fighter pilots comes from a handful of books and a few films, all of them made decades ago. "There are several generations that have never seen these planes in action," says Executive Producer Philip Goldfarb. In fact, it’s been even longer, over 75 years, since any major film undertook to portray the remarkable Lafayette Escadrille. The first film to do so was "Wings". Starring Clara Bow and Gary Cooper, "Wings", directed by William A Wellmanwon, won the first Academy Award ® for Best Picture in 1929 and played for two years. In 1930, "The Dawn Patrol" and "Hell's Angels", both of which were directed by experienced pilots (Howard Hawks and Howard Hughes respectively), were also highly successful. "World War I has not really been featured in any [modern] films, with the exception of France’s "A Very Long Engagement" and twenty-some years ago, Australia’s "Gallipoli", both of which focused on trench warfare," says Devlin. "It's been decades and decades since we've seen anything about the aerial battles. I think one reason we haven't seen these films in a long time is because these planes haven't existed for a long time. And the technology to do these kinds of battles has only existed recently." When Devlin read "Flyboys", the first person he thought of for the directing job was his longtime friend, Oscar® winning actor/director/producer Tony Bill. Devlin knew that not only had Bill been a licensed aerobatic pilot since he was fourteen, but that he was a dedicated World War I buff with one of the world’s largest private collections of books on the subject. "When World War I broke out, most people had never seen an airplane, much less flown in one," says Bill. "The Wright Brothers had flown at Kitty Hawk in the last few days of 1903 but, incredibly, the airplane had languished, practically unnoticed for several more years. Aeronautical technology had barely advanced before WWI. This was a time when most people had never even driven a car, so the airplanes of World War I were the space vehicles of their time. They weren't in a cockpit, they didn't have any protection around them or parachutes. A mere spark was almost certainly fatal. They were basically flammable, flying targets." And it must be remembered, these planes were made of canvas, wood, wires, and linen. "If anyone has ever wondered what it's like to fly inverted or to do loops and rolls in the sky in an open cockpit biplane with people shooting at you, this is their chance to find out," says Bill. "There's no template for this movie. No one's seen this movie before." Actor Tyler Labine, who plays Briggs Lowry in "Flyboys" recalls reading up on the subject. "Before we started shooting, Tony gave me some books and stories to read about these guys," he said. "These stories were amazing: like the story of a pilot whose plane had flipped upside down, and he’s in an inverted spin hanging from the wing, trying to pull himself back into the cockpit, control the airplane and avoid being shot down, all before he hits the ground!" Jean Reno (star of The Crimson Rivers") who plays Captain Thenault, says he realized "the extraordinary bravery of these men when he first set eyes on a real plane from the period on the "Flyboys" set. When you see those planes up close, it's like flying a kite in the clouds! You have only leather, wood, wire and cloth and you wonder how, how people could fly and fight in these planes? They're basically sitting on clouds, completely open to everything around them. They were very courageous." "The part of WWI history we deal with is the war in the air," says Bill. "The horrible filth and pain and suffering on the ground was pretty much left behind in the air. It was a different war up there." Executive Producer Phillip M Goldfarb ("Thank God It's Friday") notes, "World War I was the last time there was a direct connection between combatants in a war. You were close enough to see the other individual's face while fighting and flying. There are stories about firing a weapon and the blood of your enemy would literally end up on your windshield and face. It was graphic, but it also gave an intimacy and personal connection that never existed again." As aerial tactics developed, this new combat became reminiscent of medieval military tournaments, with one-on-one dogfights between pilots, resembling warriors on horseback; soon they were called 'Knights of the Air'. David Ellison (who also happens to be an aerobatic pilot) plays Eddie Beagle in "Flyboys". He agrees with these notions of chivalry: "While in the air, if you shot down an enemy over foreign territory, you either saw him make it home to fight another day, or he died," he says adding, "But if he made it to the ground and lived, you didn't try to kill him on the ground." "The great films about aerial warfare have been made by pilots: William Wellman, Howard Hawks, Howard Hughes," says Devlin. "Our director, Tony Bill, is a pilot. I think having him as the film's director allows us to tell the story in a way that's very truthful to that joy, that rush, the adventure and thrill it is to be in the air." The real-life Lafayette Escadrille was commanded by French Captain Georges Thenault, who had a handful of Americans assigned to him as pilots: Kiffin Rockwell, James McConnell, Norman Prince, Victor Chapman, Laurence Rumsey, Bert Hall, William Thaw and Elliot Cowdin. These men were soon joined by additional pilots, creating a core group of thirty eight. Some of the most famous names include James Norman Hall (co-author of the classic novel Mutiny on the Bounty), the legendary Frank Luke, and Raoul Lufbery, a Frenchman born in America who became the squadron's first ace. Eventually, some two hundred and sixty five young Americans served as pilots for the French, as the Escadrille expanded into the Lafayette Flying Corps. "Flyboys" focuses on the group of young Americans who served from 1916 to 1918, and combines many of the colorful real-life characters in this story about an original and diverse group of heroes. It is certainly a great tribute to their bravery and daring. "They were all very young and innocent," says director Tony Bill. "Most of them were barely out of college and some were teenagers. If they lived more than six weeks they were considered a veteran." The well chosen cast depicts that youthful rawness. "I jumped at the opportunity to play a character who embodies a lot of strength in a classic kind of film," says James Franco who plays Texas ranch boy Blaine Rawlings. "Frankly, nowadays, a lot of the roles I see around are these weak, scummy young guys, and that is not as appealing to me. This was a big, romantic, dynamic film. I wanted to be a part of it." "This is a huge movie," says Martin Henderson, who portrays Cassidy, a character loosely based on the American-born ace Raoul Lufbery. "It has strong characters and says a lot about relationships and love and friendship and death. Yet, it's also an action movie with planes diving across the skies, shooting at each other, going down in flames and crashing into each other." "What those men did was at another level," says Abdul Salis, who portrays fighter Eugene Skinner, based on Eugene Bullard, the first African-American combat pilot. "What I liked was that they all came from different walks of life and had different reasons for being there," says Tyler Labine. "Some of the men wanted to fight for others’ freedom, others were trying to leave their past behind, and some just wanted to fly. But once they get up in the air and start to fight, they really band together and the things that have separated them on the ground start to change." And yes there is a love interest woven into the film. The beautiful French girl Lucienne, played by Jennifer Decker. "Lucienne is kind of a first love for Rawlings," says Franco. "When he arrives, he's fighting for ideals, but after meeting Lucienne, he's now fighting for someone he cares about whose life and world is at stake." One aspect of the film which will grab everyones attention is the squadrons mascot. During their early days, the Lafayette Escadrille had two lions as mascots, one named "Whiskey," purchased for fun, and the other, "Soda", bought when Whiskey turned out to be popular. Both real-life lions are represented in the film by a single fifteen month old lion named Shaka. While filmmakers combined the two lions into one mascot in "Flyboys", there's no doubt the king of the jungle is the star of the film. "Shaka is the man. He's beautiful, a real star," says talented New Zealander Martin Henderson ("Little Fish" and "The Ring") who plays the veteran flyer Cassidy. His character was inspired by the legendary fighter pilot ace Major Raoul Lufbery. The Verdict "While it may not qualify as an epic or a blockbuster, "Flyboys" still has plenty going for it. The cast are good, the storyline is easy to follow and the dogfights between the fragile flying machines are both spectacular and thrilling. What "Flyboys" does do is to reinforce the bravado, the daring and the commitment these young men made to a new form of fighting, that was very much in its infancy. The film evokes a realistic dread in the audience each and every time the squadron takes to the air in their flimsy, frail aircraft. It is beautifully photographed and the comradery between the young men is so believable, you soon feel a part of their lives. The legacy the young men established in WW1 through the famous legendary Lafayette Escadrille, lives on in the entertaining, "Flyboys". 3 1/2 STARS." Cast & Crew Bytes "FLYBOYS" stars .......
Golden Globe Award ® winner James Franco ["Never Been Kissed", "City By The Sea", "Tristan + Isolde" and "Spider-Man 1 & 2"]; Tyler Labine ["Tail Lights Fade", "Mr Rice's Secret", "Get Carter" and "My Boss's Daughter"]; Philip Winchester ["The Patriot", "The Hi-Line" and "Thunderbirds"]; Michael Jibson ["English Goodbye"]; Abdul Salis ["Sahara" and "Love Actually"]; David Ellison ["The Chumscrubber" and "When All Else Fails"]; Gunnar Winbergh ["Millions"]; Jennifer Decker ["Cobb", "Jeux de haute société" and "Jeune homme"] and Jean Reno ["The Crimson Rivers", "Tais-toi!", "The Pink Panther" and "The Da Vinci Code"] as Captain Thenault.
"FLYBOYS" was .......
directed by Academy Award ® winner Tony Bill ["Six Weeks", "Crazy People", "Untamed Heart" and "A Home of Our Own"]; screenplay by Academy Award ® winner David S Ward ["The Sting", "Saving Grace", "Sleepless in Seattle" and "The Best Man"], Blake T Evans ["Flyboys"] and Phil Sears ["Ripper Man"]; story by Blake T Evans ["Flyboys"]; production design by Charles Wood ["Get Carter", "Driven", "The Italian Job" and "Laws of Attraction"]; director of photography Henry Braham ["Home Away from Home", "Crush", "Bright Young Things" and "Nanny McPhee"]; original music by Trevor Rabin ["Bad Boys II", "National Treasure", "Snakes On A Plane" and "The Guardian"]; set decoration by Eliza Solesbury ["Enigma", "Pearl Harbor", "Heartlands" and "Flight of the Phoenix"]; costume design by Nic Ede ["Castaway", "Not Without My Daughter", "Bright Young Things" and "Nanny McPhee"]. Run Time 138 minutes Rated M [AUST] Copyright ©2007 - MGM - All Rights Reserved Copyright Protected © 2007 - Impact Internet Services - All Rights Reserved