Planes, carriers, planes! Not sure why they think people forgot about Korea, but it looks nice.
The Korean War is always fighting with The War of 1812 for the title of America’s forgotten war. They lost a key battle with the success of MASH (the series), but now that the show has been off the air for three decades, and with the US Capitol under attack again, our forgetfulness is turning into a tight horse race.
This looks pretty good. They could do a lot worse to be “Red Tails 2”.
This country doesn’t do enough for veterans of the War on Christmas.
I don’t think they could recreate the famous air battles of 1812.
I recall seeing footage of the air battles over Macho Grande.
Over Macho Grande? I don’t think I’ll ever get over Macho Grande.
Looks like Glen Powell called dibs on aviation movies this year, eh?
Powell was actually a producer on this and helped get the book made into the movie, according to an interview on The Fighter Pilot podcast. He’s excellent in this.
Saw it tonight with the kid. Holy crap, it’s worth going just for the Corsair and Bearcat porn. As with Top Gun, the flying scenes are real. SInce there are no two-seat Corsairs or Bearcats, they actually rigged up some trainers (I assume T-6s?) so that the back of the rear cockpit would look like a Corsairs, so they could shoot actual aerial shots of Powell and Majors. I can’t wait for the “making of” on this movie. They also built a full aircraft carrier deck – with Island – outside of Savannah, GA, after realizing it wasn’t feasible to film on a retired carrier.
The movie is superb. Come for the airplane porn, stay for the heroism and bravery, and be reminded that racism sucks which apparently an embarrassingly large segment of bubbas who like war movies still don’t understand. Tells a great, true story, without much Hollywood embellishment.
And it really has the most accurate flying scenes I’ve seen in a movie – planes really doing what they did, no Star Wars level gunfire like Midway, and thrilling footage of real planes at low level. CGI is mostly used for shots of carriers in the water and to convincingly put the sea behind the carrier deck they built.
I can’t wait to buy the 4K Blu-ray of this. Hope it’s packed with background stuff.
So, wait, this isn’t one of those Christian-themed movies that have one-word titles just like this?
Can’t wait to see Corsair and especially Bearcat porn–the latter which I’m not even sure has even really been featured in cinema before. Almost as sexy as Skyraider porn.
Accidentally spoiled myself on what happens in real life, so I’m curious how the film depicts it.
— Alan
This movie is on my list to go see for sure.
You had me at Corsair!
This is now streaming on Paramount+.
You can watch my favorite aviation movie of 2022 – Devotion – there, as well as my second favorite, some Tom Cruise flick.
I started watching this yesterday. I watched the section that’s in Rhode Island. Really enjoying it so far.
Honestly, it makes me want to fire up Microsoft Flight Simulator and see if I can fly over the same area of Rhode Island and buzz that lighthouse.
I mean, I’m not sexually attracted to airplanes, but those Corsair wings… damn.
I enjoyed this as much as TG Maverick, and that was my favorite movie of 2022.
Was delighted to see the movie pop up on Netflix over here in Germany since it didn’t have a theatricla run, sadly. Certainly would have preferred seeing it on the big screen.
Overall, it’s familiar plot beats, but well-crafted and nicely shot. I’ve become a big fan of Jonathan Majors over the past years, and thought he was great in this as well. As Editer already noted, the action is well done and always feels grounded, i.e. the laws of physics aren’t bent. There’s a scene though where I can see Tom yell at the screen because some Chinese soldiers are firing an AA gun at Brown’s Corsair as it’s passing by at high speed, and they’re not leading the shot.
@Editer
(I was gonna post this in the Oscars thread, but moved to the movie thread)
I wish I liked Devotion more. I thought the performances of the 2 leads were great, but the film’s structure was lacking a bit. It got a little trope-y in places. They really wanted to focus on the racial issues in the film, but they also really wanted to tell the true story of what happened. I don’t think the film successfully stitched these 2 things together well. If they wanted to focus more on the racial aspect, they would have made it more of a biopic, showing Jesse’s life story, we would have gotten a more complete picture of his struggles on the way to officer-ship. I read a lot about the history after watching the film, and was struck by how amazing his life story was.
There was a very clear divide for Jesse inside and outside the military. Outside the military, he faced racism, mistreatment, and the horrible things any black man in the 1940s-50s would have to endure. In the military, he found a place that almost nobody cared about the color of his skin, only his talents (which were great). He was able to compete fairly for his position and succeeded in not only becoming a fighter pilot but completing a degree in architectural engineering. I think a movie more focused on his entire life story would have been a better film.
Instead, we got something that tried to straddle the line between the two aspects, biography and war story, without focusing enough on either. Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell were great though. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the film a lot, I just left it wanting more.