Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell star as real-life Korean War heroes Jesse Brown and Tom Hudner, whose friendship reflects the US Navy's early attempts at integration.
African-American boxing champion Muhammad Ali refused to fight for his country, justifying himself with the oft-quoted quip: "No Viet Cong called me n—–." That's half the American story, and an important one. “Devotion” tells the other, presenting the story of a black pilot so determined to defend—and die for, if need be—the United States that he was willing to endure institutional bigotry to become the Jackie Robinson of the skies: Jesse Brown, the first aviator of color to complete the Navy's basic training program.
A boxy but satisfying social justice drama set against the backdrop of the Korean War, “Devotion” wowed on the biggest possible screen at the Toronto Film Festival two months before its November 23 theatrical release. With elements of "Green Book" and "Red Tails," the film is more than a poignant case of black exceptionalism; it also celebrates the only white officer to support Brown, Tom Hudner, treating the bond these two men formed as something exceptional in itself. Director JD Dillard dazzles with aerial Imax footage, but the gist of the film centers on the friendship between Brown and his white partner, played by Glen Powell, the "Hidden Figures" actor who most recently appeared in "Top Gun". : Maverick.
In that inclusive-minded blockbuster, it's apparently no big deal that many of the young pilots assembled for the film's trick-flying mission are women and people of color, implying that the battle for equal treatment in the US military has fought and won. In “Devotion”, that fight is still active. Brown carries a book in which he has written all the insults and epithets that have been thrown at him. Most days, as some kind of brutal motivational exercise, he looks in the mirror and yells at the face he sees there, directly at the camera at one point. This is his armor, the way he strengthens himself for any new disrespect the other pilots may throw at him.
“Devotion” takes place in 1950, but that mirror scene will no doubt resonate with contemporary audiences as well. Today, we speak of "microaggressions," which is one way such barbs still manifest. However, before the civil rights movement, at a time when segregation was widespread practice in the United States, Brown would have taken such bigotry with full force from him. Men like Hudner were the exception: someone decent enough to offer a fellow black airman a ride, or to step in and strike the first blow when less tolerant soldiers try to provoke a fight.
Many black men had served in the US military before Brown, though national politics kept them separate from white soldiers and Jim Crow rules still applied. "Did you ever think you would be in the service of a colored sailor?" asks one of the other pilots, who could be Joe Jonas. Hudner doesn't share his disgust with the new situation. In most of it, he's just itching for action. Hudner enlisted when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, but the war ended a week before he graduated, meaning he missed the "Big Show." Although much of "Devotion" is presented through Hudner's eyes, Dillard occasionally breaks from that perspective to share Brown's experience, and each time he does, the film becomes more interesting: the scene where Brown meets Elizabeth Taylor on the beach at Cannes, for example. , or an important interaction with a lower-ranking black sailor, presenting him with a symbol of men's admiration.
Integration was a difficult process throughout American society, as those indoctrinated by notions of their own superiority tried to hold on to their power as long as possible. Revisiting these dynamics on screen is invariably ugly and potentially triggering for many, which is one reason storytellers prefer to focus on progressive cases like Hudner, who demonstrates no overt racism when he meets Brown at Quonset Point Base in Rhode Island.
Although both are talented pilots, Brown has trouble adjusting to the Navy's 1950 fighter aircraft, the Vought F4U Corsair, whose bulky engine blocked visibility. That change at the end of the game adds a level of suspense to the film's aerial sequences, some of which, like the first lighthouse run, exist simply to give.
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