Heart in the Clouds
This year’s other aviator movie has no Cruise and a lot more feeling.
it’s hard not to be reminded of the Top Gun movies while watching the opening scenes of Devotion. The film cuts from sensuous close-ups of a Vought F4U Corsair fighter to the image of a bomber-jacketed Glen Powell—who was a scene-stealer in Top Gun: Maverick—as he drives alongside a plane taking off from a runway and struts onto the Quonset Point air station on the coast of Rhode Island. But this poignant aviation drama establishes its own tone as Powell’s Tom Hudner enters an empty locker room and hears a man’s voice in the bathroom muttering, “You ain’t worth shit.”
That voice belongs to Ensign Jesse Brown (Jonathan Majors). He’s an accomplished flier who has, we learn, so absorbed the racism and hatred he’s faced over the years that he often repeats the insults in the mirror to get himself going. It’s circa 1950, and war is brewing in Korea. To Strike Fighter Squadron 32, the conflict is a chance to prove themselves; most of them missed World War II, which they call “the Big Show.” But Brown—with whom Hudner is paired early on—stands apart from the others, both because he is the only Black flier and because as a family man, he has a life he’d like to return to. To his loving wife, Daisy (Christina Jackson), the idea of Jesse serving abroad is cause for grave concern.
Devotion, directed by J.D. Dillard, tells the tale of Brown and Hudner’s growing friendship as the Fighting 32nd ships out and finally faces aerial combat. It certainly works as a war movie, even if the moves are fairly familiar by this point. There’s the early tragedy to remind our heroes of the dangers of their job; there’s the boozy, chummy interlude on the French Riviera (where the men wind up partying with Elizabeth Taylor!); there’s the part where someone defies orders to engage in an act of heroism; there’s the ill-advised rescue mission. Devotion is based on a true story, and the obligatory roll call of archival photos at the end reminds us that a lot of this stuff—including the run-in with Taylor— actually happened. But within the familiar lie uncomfortable truths: For a Black soldier at the time, a heroic act of defiance could be seen as insubordination, even disgrace.
The film, to its credit, manages to make its more predictable elements feel compelling and new. Dillard brings confidence and authenticity to the aerial scenes, and the film’s climax, set during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, is riveting. One shouldn’t expect dazzling, Maverick-style spectacle here (even if the two films share an aerial stunt coordinator in the brilliant Kevin LaRosa Jr.). This is a smaller, more somber picture, in which the suspense comes not from the machines but from the men. Soldiers are not the type to wear their emotions on their sleeves. They are terse, restrained people for whom control and discipline are everything. Brown in particular has learned the hard way not to really trust anybody. As a result, the relationship between him and Hudner, which starts standoffish and moves toward loyalty, never comes off as conventionally dramatic. This is not a shouty movie; read between the lines to understand how they really feel. There are stretches of Devotion when it doesn’t seem like all that much is happening, but then you look closer and you realize that just about everything is.
That requires a lot from the actors. Majors brings to Brown a brooding solitude in his line readings and expressions and even the way he carries himself. Whenever we learn something new about him, it feels like a heavy door briefly opened, revealing a sliver of light. Partly, it’s because this character is dedicated to something supposedly greater than himself— a military, a nation, a cause—yet knows he has to hang on to his individuality because the thing he’s given himself over to might not be entirely deserving. Powell’s performance, as his character is pulled into Brown’s orbit, is largely reactive. It’s touching to see Hudner go from a wide-eyed, happy-go-lucky flyboy to someone more grounded, more compassionate, and maybe even more melancholy. There’s a duality to the film’s title: Ultimately, it’s not service or a flag that these men devote themselves to but one another.