Devotion (2022) on Netflix
Ensign Jesse Brown is the only Black aviator in Fighter Squadron 32 at Quonset Point. Lieutenant Tom Hudner joins the unit, and both fly the F4U-4 Corsair.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb6.6/1033,271 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes81%
Trailer
Plot summary
Lieutenant Tom Hudner joins Fighter Squadron 32, based at Quonset Point Naval Air Station, in early 1950, where he meets Ensign Jesse Brown, the only Black pilot in the unit. The squadron flies the F4U-4 Corsair, a powerful plane that can be fatal if mishandled. Hudner begins driving Brown when his car breaks down and gets to know Brown's wife, Daisy, and the couple's young daughter, Pam. The Browns have racist neighbors. The squadron passes its carrier tests and moves aboard the USS Leyte, bound for the Mediterranean to deter Soviet aggression.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Devotion (2022)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Glen Powell had read Adam Makos's book when it came out in 2015, took it to Black Label Media's Molly Smith to option, and visited Thomas J. Hudner Jr. shortly before Hudner died in 2017. Powell said the photographs and mementos of Jesse Brown in Hudner's house carried a weight he brought to the role.
- For cockpit shots of actors in the F8F Bearcat, the production used a Hawker Sea Fury whose rear seat was rebuilt as a Bearcat cockpit and whose visible panels were painted as a VF-32 Bearcat, so the actors appeared to fly during real maneuvers. Audio of a Corsair in flight was recorded with five microphones.
- Director J. D. Dillard, himself the son of a naval aviator, built the film around his father's stories of being the lone black man in a predominantly white aviation community. His father visited the set as a technical advisor and is acknowledged on a separate card in the end credits.
- Dillard used real aircraft wherever possible, among them F4U Corsairs, an AD Skyraider, F8F Bearcats, one of the few flyable HO5S-1 helicopters and a MiG-15, all painted in period squadron colors. He hired Top Gun: Maverick's aerial stunt coordinator Kevin LaRosa and used a modified L-39 Albatros as an air-to-air camera platform.
- A full-size recreation of the USS Leyte was built at the Statesboro-Bulloch County Airport in Georgia between March 17 and April 13, 2021, and the wintry landscape of Washington state doubled for the Battle of Chosin Reservoir.
- Joe Jonas and Khalid wrote and performed a duet, "Not Alone", for the end credits, but the single was left off the soundtrack and was not shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
