Based on a true story and also based on a popular book, Devotion is a solid war movie. What drew me to this was that I heard it was as much about friendship as it was about the war itself. It is such a shame that this turned out to be a real box office bomb when it was released, it is said it was the lowest Thanksgiving opening for a movie in a very, very long time!
How to Download Devotion
Because Devotion is a Sony Pictures film sometime after its theatrical release you can expect to be able to download or stream the film from Netflix. This happened exactly with another 2022 hit Where the Crawdads Sing. It should be also available on other digital platforms. Click on the Download button at the end of this review to check the current availability.
The Movie Review
I feel that it is a real shame Devotion did not find its audience as it is a good movie. Perhaps it will become more popular when it hits streaming or Blu-Ray. I know that I would certainly love to watch this again when it is available at home. Taking place in the 50s, during the Korea war, our main characters are fighter pilots, Lieutenant Tom Hudner and Ensign Jesse Brown.
The twist here is that Jesse is the only black man in his unit which makes for some very uncomfortable situations for him. Jesse and his family have to deal with racism and seeing him yell racist insults at himself to fire himself up is pretty brutal stuff. Despite all of this, Jesse is a great pilot and a good husband and father.
Tom is your typical military man and I really liked his character. Tom and Jesse form a very strong friendship that creates this unbreakable bond where Tom is always looking out for Jesse. It makes for some great scenes between the two and when Jesse’s wife asks Tom to be with him while they are away at war, I got a very bad feeling!
As the Korean war escalates, their unit is sent to fight in the war. The action scenes in Devotion are very well done and while the movie has a rather modest budget by action movie standards, the effects are great. Jesse is of the mindset that you cannot always follow orders when on a mission and that is what gets him in trouble, but also saves the day as well. He is a true hero and a character that is impossible not to love.
I do not want to go into spoiler territory, but Devotion is a bit of a heartbreaking movie. However, while it does tug on those heartstrings, Devotion as well as being about the war, is also a movie about hope, friendship, and being there for a close friend. I cannot say for sure how authentic this is to the true story it is based on or even the book, but I was very entertained from start to end.
There are some movies that bomb and you just feel so sorry for everyone involved, that was basically how I felt about this. Devotion is a solid war movie and one that really should have not been released when it did! I feel had they shifted the release date and the marketing had been better, this could have been a bigger deal. I actually know very few people who even knew that this was a movie that existed!
