Wick's Review

Summary - Very Good 3.5

Devotion is a poorly-titled twofer: a damn good war movie about a Medal of Honor recipient and his heroic squadron, plus a powerful biopic about the Navy’s first black fighter pilot. It’s triply good for reviving these true stories about the sadly overlooked Korean War. All in all, that makes it a very good movie.

Acting - Very Good 3.5

Jonathan Majors & Glen Powell are well mismatched movie buddies: Majors as the legendary Ensign Jesse Brown & Powell as Medal of Honor recipient Lt. Tom Hudner.

Majors jumped offscreen as a Buffalo Soldier in the great Revisionist-Western Hostiles and in the Detroit crime drama White Boy Rick. It’s not surprising then that he’s up to the challenge of essaying such a historically freighted role as Jesse L. Brown. Ensign Jesse L. Brown was the first African-American aviator to complete the Navy’s flight training program, a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the first African-American naval officer killed in the Korean War, where he was a hero. Him.

Powell also jumps offscreen, which is what he does in every movie he appears. Glen Powell is a M.O.V.I.E.S.T.A.R. He proved it twice over in 2016, in Everybody Wants Some!! and in Hidden Figures, as John Glenn for goodness’ sake. So, his quietly charismatic performance in Devotion is par for the course.

SUPPORTERS

• Christina Jackson as Daisy Brown
• Joe Jonas as Marty Goode
• Thomas Sadoski as Dick Cevoli
• Serinda Swan as Elizabeth Taylor, yes Liz Taylor

Film - Very Good 3.5

Edge - Risqué 1.9

Reality - Glib 1.2

Important stories are rarely so well recounted as the hero journeys of Ensign Jesse L. Brown & Lt. Tom Hunder in Devotion.

• History vs. Hollywood on Devotion
• Quora on prop planes shooting down jets

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