Fulsome tribute to the boys, the men, of the Lafayette Escadrille, the corps of American volunteers who flew for France in the First World War. A throwback, to some extent, to the aviation films of, for the prime example, William Wellman, except that Wellman had himself been a pilot in the Escadrille, and in consequence did not have so exaggerated, so exalted, a view of it. James Franco, a contemporary cutie-pie anachronistically aping a Fifties method actor (James Dean) in a setting of the Teens, is no heftier a star than Tab Hunter in Wellman's 1958 film named after the corps, but then again Hunter wasn't asked to be such a paragon. Martin Henderson, the new Bruce Boxleitner aspiring to be the new Bill Pullman, comes up even shorter, even lighter, as the hard-bitten, battle-scarred ace of the squad. A couple of colorful details -- the 18th-century chateau for a barracks, the domesticated lion for a mascot -- cannot go far to compensate for the cardboard characters, the hand-me-down dramatics, the taxing love interest (she speaks no English, he speaks no French), the squarish direction (Tony Bill), the tinny dialogue, the blustery music. There is nevertheless plenty of action, even if it mostly takes place inside a computer, programmed to hurl objects straight at your eyeballs till you yearn for the red-and-green goggles of 3-D. With Jennifer Decker, Jean Reno. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd