Cardboard Air Force – Newspaper Kommersant No. 225 (7426) dated 12/05/2022

Justin Dillard’s film “Double Loop” (Devotion), based on the true events of the Korean War (1950-1953), was released. When viewing it Julia Shagelman I was convinced that patriotic cinema all over the world is made according to the same patterns, nullifying any possibility of emotional involvement for the audience.

According to the Russian title (“Double Loop” replaced the original “Devotion”) and the trailer of the film, one can decide that it is intended to become a replacement for this year’s box office champion, Joseph Kosinski’s blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick, which did not reach legal domestic rental. Indeed, all the components of the air force “porn” are present here: “aviator” glasses, creaking leather jackets, white-toothed smiles of the guys at the controls of the fighters, these fighters themselves, aerobatics and, of course, real male friendship. In Justin Dillard’s film, one of the actors who appeared in Top Gan even starred – Glen Powell, who moved from the third plan to the first, although he did not get the opportunity to play a voluminous character here either.

However, in more than two hours of “Double Loop” there are much more conventionally dramatic collisions than action. The script was based on Adam Makov’s book about the first black pilot of the US Navy, Jesse Brown, and director Dillard himself is the son of only the second African American accepted into the famous Blue Angels squadron. Therefore, the first thing on the minds of the authors is not airplanes, but systemic racism that reigned in the fifties in the American army and navy, as well as in civilian life.

The heroes get to the Korean front when the film has already managed to cross the middle. First, viewers have time to get acquainted with life at the Rhode Island Naval Base, where Brown (Jonathan Major), who has earned his place and lieutenant rank with incredible work and perseverance, and Tom Hudner (Powell), who has just graduated from the flight academy, become reliable comrades. Hudner is the only one who, accustomed to the obvious and hidden contempt of his colleagues, Brown is ready to let him get closer, he even introduces him to his wife (Christina Jackson in an ungrateful role, reduced mainly to the quiet stoicism of a patient fighting girlfriend) and little daughter. The rest of the pilots, one of whom is played by career-changing pop singer Joe Jonas, remain indistinguishable figures in uniform until the end of the film. They participate in two rather impressive training flights, but the main action takes place on the ground, and then on board the aircraft carrier that carries our heroes to Europe. From the on-screen geopolitical comments, the purpose of this mission is not entirely clear, but it gives the authors the opportunity to insert into the picture a rather stupid episode from the Cannes furlough, when the pilots meet Elizabeth Taylor (Serinda Swan), and Brown is again discriminated against.

True, despite the efforts of Jonathan Major, who put passion, pain, and hard-to-suppressed anger, which seems to guide all the actions of his hero, into his role, a full-fledged human story did not work out in the film either. As soon as the actors come to some emotional nuances, the director cuts off such an episode for the sake of another cardboard patriotic speech or a scene borrowed from a set of common clichés of all war films ever made.

At such moments, the “Double Loop” begins to confusingly resemble the domestic patriotic blockbusters that have been regularly stamped in recent years. Yes, the Americans have “soviets” as an enemy in alliance with the Chinese and North Koreans, who are present on the screen in the form of faceless silhouettes with weapons, and the brave guys are fighting to stop the spread of communism around the world, but all the tricks and plot moves are exactly the same the most. War, by and large, is seen as not the most pleasant thing, but its necessity is not reflected in any way and is not questioned. Although the squadron commander (Thomas Sadoski) monologues about the futility of armed conflicts and the fact that the goal of any of them is ultimately not victory, but survival, this common sense is not reflected anywhere else in the film. Fights that look like scenes from a computer shooter are just an excuse to show how beautifully sunlight plays on the wings of vintage corsairs, and anti-aircraft gun tracers cut through the blue sky. After all, it was not in vain that the operator with the surname Messerschmidt, very suitable for this occasion, shot the picture.