Devotion Review: J.D. Dillard’s Korean War Epic Plays Like a Navy Recruitment Ad

The Vought F4U Corsair fighter planes that naval aviators Jesse Brown (Jonathan Majors) and Tom Hudner (Glen Powell) learn to fly in J.D. Dillard’s Devotion were renowned for their speed and power in combat throughout the 1940s and ’50s. The limited visibility of the aircrafts and their sensitivity to weight distribution, though, made them extremely difficult to handle. They look slick, but when mishandled, the results could be disastrous, as evidenced by one pilot’s (Nick Hargrove) slightly flawed decisions in the air, resulting in a fatal crash.

It’s a fitting metaphor for the modern Hollywood biopic, which, when thoughtfully maneuvered by a skilled director, can occasionally soar. Yet, even in the hands of the most capable filmmakers, audiences are more often left with bloated, unwieldy behemoths like Devotion, an unfocused, awkwardly paced film that never quite gets off the ground and, as a result, will do little to change perceptions of the Korean War as the “forgotten war.”

When it keeps its proverbial wings level, focusing on the too-infrequent aerial missions or actually delving into Brown’s turmoil as he faces the challenges of being the Navy’s first Black aviator, Devotion can be compelling. But it’s bogged down by often sluggish plotting and an overreliance on the most tiresome tropes of war films and racial dramas, while also remaining doggedly apolitical in its perspective. It never quite finds its bearings, and its forced attempts to inspire as a social issue film only highlight how flat and lifeless it is as a work of drama.

Pairing Majors with Powell was certainly the filmmakers’ smartest move. Though more restrained here than he was in Joseph Kosinski’s Top Gun: Maverick, Powell gets to intermittently channel the sheer force of his charisma, and it contrasts effectively with the quietly powerful Majors. Indeed, Majors’s subdued yet empathetic portrayal of Jesse does far more to bring the man’s sorrows and frustrations into sharper focus than Jake Crane and Jonathan Stewart’s screenplay. The actor conveys Jesse’s deep-seated pain and resilience merely through a wrinkle in his brow, a measured pause in his response, or in his guarded manner around everyone in his unit, including his wingman, Tom.

Regrettably, few of Jesse and Tom’s interactions do much to shed any additional light on their friendship and Jesse’s interiority, mostly stressing Tom’s willingness to stand up for Jesse whenever his buddy faces direct or indirect racism. That the duo are surrounded by so many bland avatars of masculine identity doesn’t help matters, nor does the film’s reductive “bad apple” approach to racism, which puts nearly all of the vitriol and violent threats heading Jesse’s way in the mouth of a single character, Buddy Gill (Boone Platt).

Despite also being based on a real person, Jesse and Tom’s platoon commander, Dick Cevoli (Thomas Sadoski), is clearly a 21st-century concoction, given that he’s a fount of seemingly endless patience and compassion, and prone to tenderly delivering the sort of sage advice that handily, and sometimes risibly, pushes Devotion into dissonant territory. Elsewhere, Jesse’s wife, Daisy (Christina Jackson), is a cookie-cutter representation of the dutiful, supportive housewife, right down to the unintentionally comical detail of her always being hard at work painting a different wall in their new house whenever Jesse comes home.

For all its warmed-over character and narrative beats, Devotion does finally deliver on some of its promise in the third act once Jesse, Tom, and company find themselves in the throes of battle in North Korea. It’s not the most viscerally thrilling set piece, given the preponderance of CGI, but it’s the rare stretch of the film where the stakes feel genuinely high and Jesse’s skills as an aviator are extensively highlighted. Unfortunately, the majority of Devotion is earthbound, filling the audience, like some hot-shot pilot, with the itch to take flight.