Weekly Witch Hunt: Winged Victory & Live By Night

We decide what artistic endeavour passed approval to earn the Scorcher label from the past seven days & what also had the dishonour of being that week's Torture...

War and Mobsters have been the order of the day over this last week.  My scorcher is full of material ripe for a film adaptation.  I would love to see a screen version of No. 46 Squadron and all the triumph and tragedy associated with Tom Cundall and Co.
Sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for as not all book adaptations work out as my torture this week did not live up to expectations.  I haven't actually read the novel but I am keen to give it a perusal.

The Scorcher

There are many books covering the events of World War I but not too many that focus solely on the newest form of warfare of the time: war in the air.  Author V.M. Yeates was a fighter pilot with No. 46 Squadron and wrote his novel Winged Victory based on his and his fellow pilots experiences during the Great War.
Whilst this is a work of fiction, it is based around actual events and draws extensively from Yeates' memory for detail of the reality of war.  His exposure to the ghastly goings on around him and the other flight crew are told in great detail through the eyes of the main protagonist Tom Cundall.  Some of the supporting characters are heavily influenced by the people who fought alongside Yeates.
Yeates puts across the differing views of the pilots and the debates they share about the futility of war.  Some of these views are unfortunately still as relevant today when compared with the conflicts still going on around the world.  It is quite confronting to realise that soldiers had similar opinions about world leaders and the money grabbing ways of people who are out to profit from war.  They are the same sentiments that many people feel today.
There is an awful lot of repetition in this story as Cundall goes on flight after flight, often with no real purpose or result.  This can make the book quite a grind to get through but I chose to view it differently.  I put myself fully into Cundall's position and treated it as an opportunity to experience the monotony and drudgery of war that he had to go through day after day.  It helped me gain a better perspective of the character and allowed me to feel his frustration more as he questions what it is that he is actually achieving; other than constantly putting himself in danger of being killed.
Normally when people think about WWI the first thing that pops into mind is the endless trench warfare and the other types of battles that took place tend to be forgotten.  It was very refreshing to get a real understanding of how these pioneering pilots fought in a new theatre of war.
It was fascinating reading about the dogfights and the fragile nature of these early aircraft.  The everyday life on the ground was just as enthralling as the descriptions of the flights.  It appears that their living conditions are a million miles away from what the average Tommy was having to put up with as they buried their heads in a foxhole; hoping that the next mortar shell would pass them by.  By comparison Cundall and his friends live in relative comfort when not flying and are often found spending their evenings in drunken debauchery.
That isn't to say that they aren't under duress as shelling often occurs close to their quarters but nowhere near the same levels as the trenches.  It is once the pilots take to the sky that their lives are truly in danger and because they are living with the knowledge that each day could very well be their last; you can excuse their excessive behaviour.
I would describe this novel as an aerial version of All Quiet on the Western Front with its pessimistic views about the ensuing conflict.  The real tragedy with both novels is that the two authors were writing from the heart in the hope that tales such as these would help prevent more wars in the future.  Yeates passed away before WWII commenced; I can only imagine what his thoughts would have been about the terrible events to come.

The Torture
 

I have an inherent fondness for gangster flicks.  Give me a Wiseguy and a Tommy gun and usually I am already in the ticket aisle.  The trailer for Live By Night had me all excited and having enjoyed the films that Ben Affleck has directed found this film ticking all the right columns.  The end result however was a bit of a letdown.
This film is just so slow with endless amounts of time spent basically setting things up just so we can get a massive set piece close to the end of the movie.  It is filled with cliché after cliché and doesn't stray from any average, formulaic gangster flick.  It is such a shame that Affleck couldn't inject the film with some more life as the story itself is a solid one; which makes me think that the book would be much more entertaining than this adaptation.
Affleck's Joe Coughlin isn't a nice guy and at no point does he appear to be a nice guy; so I had a hard time rooting for him.  He starts out like "I don't want to be a gangster, just a bank robber," then goes to "I want to be a gangster, but only for revenge," and then just ends up as "I am a gangster and revenge will come second now".  His motivation shifts dramatically from start to finish; so much so that you have a hard time understanding his thinking.  It had me wondering if all along he did in fact secretly want to be part of the mob.
The supporting cast are all given little to do as they flitter in and out of Coughlin's life.  Actors like Chris Cooper and Brendan Gleeson are wasted in the small roles afforded them.  Those roles are nothing though compared to the short shrift given to the female cast members.  None of the women have much to do and it hurts the end product.
Zoe Saldana is supposed to play the love interest; or more accurately the replacement love interest after the first one, Sienna Miller, is disposed of.  However she has such a small amount of screen time that you don't feel any emotional connection to her or her relationship with Coughlin.  Once their romantic subplot played out I felt next to no sympathy for the outcome because they spent hardly any time building her character.
I will admit the final shoot out that the film builds to is impressive, but it is too little too late to salvage your interest.  By the time it reached this stage I didn't care who lived or died.  This confrontation isn't the end though as the movie then pulls a The Return of the King on us and keeps going and going; showing more of Coughlin's story that also fails to hold your attention.
Affleck goes for a Film Noir feel with the look and style of the 1930's setting that mostly works.  His Coughlin narrates during the entire film which is distracting in itself, but also gives you an early indication that this guy will probably make it out alive come the end.  What it also does is show that Affleck couldn't come up with a better way of telling the story, other than through a narrator.  That should have been enough of a warning to make me reach for the book instead.