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Forgotten Warriors

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Devotion

by George Wolf

Both the title and the trailer hint at a formulaic, button-pushing war movie. Heck, seeing Glen Powell back in a cockpit might have Top Gun: Maverick fans hoping for a slice of Hangman’s family backstory.

Happily, neither pans out. Devotion does offer some thrilling air maneuvers, but reaches even greater heights with an inspiring, true-life account of two friends in a “forgotten war.”

Director J.D. Dillard (Sleight)and screenwriters Jake Crane and Jonathan Stewart bring hard truths and humanity to their adaptation of Adam Makos’s book detailing the bond between airmen on the eve of the Korean War.

Ensign Jesse Brown (Jonathan Majors) is the Navy’s first African American aviator. Lt. Tom Hudner (Powell), the “new guy,” is assigned to be his wingman. When Squadron 32 gets airborne, Dillard and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt deliver the gripping goods. But away from the runway, two sterling performances and an understated script enable the film to bypass most of the usual cliches for an effective look at struggle, sacrifice and the need for true allies in the fight for equality.

Majors is so good, delivering his best work since The Last Black Man in San Francisco. His commanding physical presence comes easily, but the way Majors conveys the soul-deep pain beneath Jesse’s strong silence is never less than moving.

Powell is an impressive wingman here, as well, as a man of privilege who can’t ignore the contradictions between Jesse’s service and the treatment he so often endures.

So come for the aerial dogfights, you won’t be disappointed. But Devotion also serves up something special on the ground, and that’s worth saluting.

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Tilting At Windmills

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Mank

by George Wolf

Since its release in 1941, Citizen Kane has earned such a prodigious place in film and popular culture that the utterance of merely one word can summon it.

And as much as Orson Welles’s masterwork has been dissected over the years, Mank reveals its essence in unique and wondrous ways.

Director/co-writer David Fincher (who honors his late father Jack’s script by listing him as the sole writer) takes us into Citizen Kane through the shadowy side entrance of screenwriter Herman “Mank” Mankiewicz. Officially, Mank and Welles shared the Kane writing credit, though just who did the heavy lifting is still a source of debate for film historians.

Fincher’s view is clear. But even the dissenters may feel powerless to the seductive pull of Mank‘s immersion into Kane‘s creation, and to the stupendous lead performance that drives it.

As Mankiewicz (“and then out of nowhere, a ‘Z’!”), Gary Oldman is out-of-this world-good. His Mank is a charmer, a gambler and a frequent drunk, bedridden by injuries from a car accident and under the gun to deliver Welles a script in just 90…no make that 60 days. And no drinking!

Tick. Tock.

The first few pages bring a critique that “none of it sings,” which is funny, because all of this sings.

Fincher’s rapid-fire dialogue is beautifully layered and lyrically precise, more like the final draft of a script than authentic conversations, which only reinforces the film’s commitment to honoring the power of writing. Onscreen typeface and script direction transition the flashbacks to Mank’s years in the Hollywood studio system of the 1930s, running in social circles with power brokers such as Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard), Irving Thalberg (Ferdinand Kingsley), Kane inspiration William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance), and Hearst’s not-so-dumb blonde mistress Marion Davies (a terrific Amanda Seyfried).

Oldman expertly sells Mank’s truth-to-power rebellion as a sly reaction to his own feelings of powerlessness. His charm as a “court jester” belies a growing angst about America’s power structure that Welles (Tom Burke) is eager to illustrate.

And though much of Mank‘s power is verbal (just try to catch a breath during Oldman’s drunken Don Quixote speech), Fincher crafts a luscious visual landscape. Buoyed by Erik Messerschmidt’s gorgeous B&W cinematography, Fincher recreates the era with sharp period detail and tips his hat to Welles with Kane-esque uses of shadow, forced perspective and one falling glass of booze.

Talk of “getting people back to the theaters” and manufactured news will feel especially relevant, but Mank provides a nearly endless peeling of satisfying layers. So much more than a story about how a classic story was told, it’s a sweeping ode to the power of courageous art, no matter how flawed the artist.