Lafayette Escadrille closed out director William Wellman's career after just over three decades, and almost perfectly bookends his serious career with the 1927 World War I epic Wings (though he had directed a tiny handful of minor pictures before that). And the best parts of Lafayette Escadrille are the aerial sequences, of which there are too few to carry the whole picture. The rest of it is drama on the ground, concerning upper-class ne'er-do-well Tab Hunter's escape from a life of delinquency into the Allied flying corps of the First World War. Hunter actually turns in one of his better performances here, with excellent support from David Janssen, Jody McCrea, Will Hutchins, William Wellman, Jr. (playing his father), and Etchika Choureau, plus such movie veterans as Paul Fix and Marcel Dalio. The makings of a masterpiece were here, but Warner Bros. was unhappy with what Wellman delivered, and -- much as MGM had with the director's Across The Wide Missouri -- made major and serious cuts to the picture, which affected the balance of all of these elements and left a much less memorable movie (filled with some fine moments) in its place.