Jonathan Majors in Stiff Korean War Epic – News Kidda

If you believe the marketing, then? Dedicationan inspiring dogfight set during the Korean War would like to be seen as Top Gun: Corsair.

Strip away the IMAX scope, high score, and flyboy swagger, though, and all that’s left is a hollow shell of dull, beat-up war movie styles that leave Jonathan Majors to effectively fend for himself with his entrenched protagonist the first black. aviator in naval history.

Based on Adam Makos’ book of the same name, which chronicled the friendship between Majors’ Jesse Brown and his fellow wingman Tom Hudner (played by Glen Powell), the story was captured by director JD Dillard (himself the son of only the second Afro -American member of the US Navy’s Blue Angels squadron) with great respect but not enough dramatic depth.

Five years have passed since the end of World War II, and as it is 1950, the presence of Ensign Brown in the US Navy’s basic flight training program does not go unnoticed; he constantly finds himself brushing aside both sharp and casually racist remarks from his colleagues. When he first meets Hudner, a new recruit, Brown develops a respectful but tentative friendship with Annapolis graduate.

A man who claims he’s never encountered a plane he couldn’t land, Brown begins to question his claim when he climbs for the first time into a Vought F4U Corsair, which has been given the ominous nickname “Widow Maker,” in part because his long nose, which obscures vision, and a tendency to bounce uncontrollably on landing. But soon Brown and Hudner learn to tame the gull-winged aircraft and are assigned to Fight Squadron 32 aboard the USS Leyte prior to the outbreak of the Korean War.

In editing the Makos novel, screenwriters Jake Crane and Jonathan AH Stewart seem content with the usual platitudes of wartime images with stiff dialogue that has the personality of a manual. Meanwhile, director Dillard prefers elongated dramatic pauses that keep getting in the way of crucial tension or momentum. Even a scene during a vacation in Cannes, when a chance beach encounter with Elizabeth Taylor (Serinda Swan) results in an invitation to party with her at a casino, ends up feeling lifeless and unnecessary. long term.

Despite those significant obstacles in his path, Majors, whose recent credits include: lovecraft country and The harder they fallinvests a tremendous amount of emotional conviction into his character – whether playfully engaging with his devoted wife, Daisy (Christina Jackson), or criticizing his reflection in a mirror, painfully reciting every hurtful/racist thing ever directed against him .

Powell, who also appeared in Top Gun: Maverickdoesn’t get much to work with – his character is a virtual coder by comparison, with little backstory, and only really finds any semblance of purpose when he has to come to the rescue of his injured partner.

Lacking fuller character development, their fellow fliers, including those of Joe Jonas and Nick Hargrove, are even less likely to impress.

Fortunately, cameraman Erik Messerschmidt (limp) manages to liven things up with those IMAX-worthy aerial images, which really didn’t require Chanda Dancy’s over-modulated musical elements to deploy at the slightest provocation, even in the absence of a Lady Gaga on the soundtrack.