Devotion movie review

MOVIE TITLE: Devotion

Currently playing in select theaters nationwide. It is not available to stream just yet.

RATING: PG-13

LENGTH: 2 hours 19 minutes

MOVIE REVIEW MOM GRADE: B+

IN A NUTSHELL:

Based on a true story, this is a dramatic Korean war movie, but more importantly, is about Jesse L. Brown, the first African-American aviator in the U.S. Navy. The Navy named a ship after him in 1973. We’ve seen tons of movies about World War II, but not very many about the Korean War, which is often called “The Forgotten War.”

The powerful film was directed by J.D. Dillard, and written by Jonathan C. Stewart, Jonathan A. H. Stewart (that had to have been confusing), and Jake Crane.

THINGS I LIKED:

Jonathan Majors gives a powerfully emotional, stellar performance.
Glen Powell does a good job and gets to wear the actual Medal of Honor at the end of the movie that was given to the real Tom Hudner Jr. He also co-produced the movie with the director.
Some of the flight scenes were actually filmed in Wenatchee, Washington to look like Korea. Most of the jets shown in the movie have been decommissioned, so a lot of CGI was used.
The director hired Kevin LaRosa to help with the dogfight scenes since he did such a fantastic job designing those action sequences in the hugely popular movie Top Gun: Maverick (2022). Try to see this movie on the biggest screen you can, just for the action sequences in the air.
The cinematography by Erik Messerschmidt was outstanding.
Nice musical score by Chanda Dancy and the sound department did such a good job that you really felt like you were there.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:

The film is filled with lots of cliches and seems to follow the biopic formula to a T.
The movie takes a very straightforward and chronological approach to storytelling and is very slow-moving.
I’m definitely not a Korean War buff, but I hear that there were many inaccuracies shown in the film.
Lots of talking and not as much action as you’d hope.