The FLYBOYS are the young American volunteers joining the Lafayette Escadrille fighter pilots in France.  The time is 1914 before the U.S. entered the war in 1917. 

An assortment of characters is handpicked for Tony Bill’s FLYBOYS.  Led by rancher Blaine Rawlings (James Franco), the others include a rich good-for-nothing, Lowry (Tyler Labine), African-American boxer, Skinner (Abdul Salis) and among others, they undergo rigorous training under a stern French Captain Thenault (the always excellent Jean Reno).

FLYBOYS begins well.  The characters are well introduced, each with their own interesting flaws and strengths.  The film captures both the American arrogance (Doesn’t anyone speak English here? – remarks a newly arrived American trainee) as do the pride of the French for their country.  The training sequences are impressively staged, especially the manual plane fighting simulations. 

FLYBOYS does not contain a main plot, but several subplots loosely strung together.  A few work well – the one of Beagle suspected of being a German spy being one while others like the romance between Rawlings and a French girl Lucienne (Jennifer Decker) do not.  The segment with Beagle and Rawlings waking up after a flight accident among a bevy of beauties seems taken right out of scene where the wounded King Arthur’s knights wake up in the castle of Andrex in MONT PYTHON’S AND THE HOLY GRAIL. 

The battle scenes stretch credibility too far.  Rawlings lands a plane without the notice of more than a dozen Germans in the quiet of daylight.  In another scene, he lands his plane in the middle of a battle field and single handedly carry a wounded pilot to safety amidst rapid gunfire.  And there is the message of ‘you got to find your own meaning in the war’ drummed into the audience once too many times.

FLYBOYS do not contain major stars, the studio boasting that that the money is better spent on special effects, props and equipment.  To this effect, the film succeeds.  The fighting sequences are excitingly executed, the atmosphere of the early World War 1 years effectively felt and the film handsomely shot.  Franco makes a handsome hero and Reno a convincing officer, though the script by Phil Sears and Blake T. Evans forces them to do outlandish things. 
FLYBOYS runs a lengthy 2 hours and fifteen minutes.  Right at the 2 hour mark, it can be felt that FLYBOYS has still to bring closures to both Rawling’s romance with Lucienne and his personal air battle with the German Black Falcon.  If only the audience could snigger under their breaths, as French actor Jean Reno did during most of his scenes in this clichéd ridden Hollywood flick.