‘Devotion. A Heroes ‘Tale’: A Scattered Racial Homage Elevated by Jonathan Majors

In the midst of Oscar season and months late like many of the nominees, A war drama arrives in Spain that a priori could have been among the favorites of the Hollywood Academy. ‘Devotion. A story of heroes has the basis: the adaptation of the book by a famous US military historian, Adam Makos; has visible faces: Jonathan Majors, Glen Powell and even singer Joe Jonas; and above all, it has great perspective: the story of Jesse Brown, the first black aviator in the history of the US Navy, and his friendship with pilot Tom Hudner during the Cold War and the battle on the Korean border. So the big question of this review is how many aspirations for greatness are left in a sparse, well-meaning Sunday afternoon drama.

From goose to goose and I count because it’s my turn

The ambition starts from the title that shares with the book on which it is based. Jonathan Stewart and Jake Crane write each scene with great respect and constantly strive to convey that devotion to the couple and to aviation as the engine of the film. They know that every detail of the true story is very important, but they can’t reflect it so much cinematically: the emotion doesn’t go beyond the fact that it’s something real. They are so concerned with telling the whole story that their script just hops around with posters in a very short amount of time to make a checklist. of all relevant events. Many important things happen, but they have no meaning, as they leave no time to leave a residue in the viewer or to see its direct repercussions. Consequently, ‘Devotion’ is a commendable film by standard.

It is surprising that its two hours and twenty minutes cover all of this, but delve into (almost) nothing. That hermetic list following the footage sets its teeth long with approaches and situations that could function as the film’s centerpiece; in fact they hook in the short time in which they capture attention, but they don’t shine. It hardly justifies seeing it on the big screen as a regular three-scene action flick. The romance and friendship drama is touching, but not thrilling. The worst attempt of all is a forgotten war pamphlet with questionable or non-existent justifications, especially for a non-American audience.

The genre that remains the most to differentiate and define the film after viewing is the race drama. There was the film, and there it was for a scant, fragmentary half hour. In fact, these minutes are the only ones closer to an Oscar than a TV Movie. To delve into racism in a new and universal way, the story narrates in the first person the paradoxes that being African American entails, representing the greatest pride of the United States. The point of view provided by the film is that brutal contrast of power between air and earth: a god in heaven who suffers the unequal dynamics of routine work, power relations with superiors and colleagues, neighborhood life… In this foot-of-the-court approach, the writers indulge in transcendent conversations and very powerful little details how to show Brown’s heritage in an African American woman interacting with his wife.

Lights and (many) shadows of construction

From directing, JD Dillard also falls into the trap of shooting homage in the style of all kinds of war films that came before him. The paradox is that, surely, many of them at the time were slightly inspired by this motivating true story. Like this, It’s very sad that his cinematic history fails to be as vibrant as any of those cases or more recent ones.. Yes, almost everything is shot well, but it doesn’t aspire to the excellence of “Top Gun: Maverick” or the shamelessness of “Midway”. Of course, the only glaring shooting or editing flaw is a surprisingly dark cinematography with no narrative purpose that makes it seriously difficult to recognize what’s on screen until it’s daylight. Even if what you see is barely distinguishable, at least what you hear excites you, with a less typical soundtrack by Chanda Dance.

It looks like a flop, and it’s not, but the truth is that the negatives are more apparent than the film’s fleeting flashes of inspired realization that reveal what could have been. While nearly everything runs on autopilot, there are times when Dillard can risk it and narrating the tension of survival in a sequential shot, simultaneously realizing a joint war strategy on the ground and in the air or making sense of a training flight. There you can see the heart of his storytelling, but again those moments don’t quite define the film as they are relegated by the script to mere disjointed and irrelevant sequences. They impress the eye, but they don’t stay in the memory because they don’t fit the whole thing nor do they abound in number.

Although the final result is halfway through, the real pilot of this aerial adventure is Jonathan Majors (“Lovecraft Territory”). The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s current Kang shows that his strength doesn’t rest in his extremely tanned torso and boasts that he has the best shot in the film: a sequence shot on his face of him whispering and crying. On his flights he doesn’t shine (nor is he allowed to shine) so much, neither in image nor in voice, but on the ground he dominates all the genres mentioned from which the screenplay takes him. His co-star, Glen Powell, can’t keep up with him like he did with Tom Cruise so ironically; here, his character is as deadpan and superficial as the rest of the team. Only Joe Jonas manages to stand out as the funny secondary that he is very fond of. In short, ‘Devotion’ doesn’t crash, because with the petrol of the first black aviator of the Navy and its magnificent interpreter it has a lot to take off, but it doesn’t even fly high.

Note: 5

The best: Jonathan Majors and the race drama.

Worse: the highly volatile structure of the script.