Glen Powell’s Overlooked Korean War Drama Devotion Hits Paramount Plus in January

There’s a specific, cynical machinery in Hollywood that sees an actor succeed in a niche and immediately tries to clone that success until the wheels fall off. For Glen Powell, that niche is the cockpit. Following the seismic success of Top Gun: Maverick, it felt inevitable that studios would scour their libraries for anything else where Powell wears aviators and looks stoic at 20,000 feet.

Enter Devotion.

The Glen Powell Devotion streaming release on Paramount+ this January feels less like a triumphant arrival and more like a correction. When this film originally landed in theaters in late 2022, it was stuck in brutal positioning—drafting off the jetwash of Maverick but offering a completely different, somber tone that general audiences weren’t ready for.

It wasn’t a bad movie. It was just marketed to the wrong room.

The Maverick Problem

Here’s the thing about studio strategy: it’s rarely subtle. Devotion, directed by J.D. Dillard, isn’t an action movie in the Joseph Kosinski sense. It doesn’t have that golden-hour, sunset-drenched, volleyball-playing sheen that made Top Gun a global phenomenon. It’s a grounded historical drama that happens to take place in the sky.

But try telling that to a marketing department.

The film details the friendship between Ensign Jesse Brown (Jonathan Majors) and Tom Hudner (Powell) during the Korean War. It’s heavy. It deals with segregation, the terrifying mechanical reality of 1950s aviation, and actual loss. Yet because Powell—fresh off playing Jake “Hangman” Seresin—was in the pilot’s seat, the expectation was high-octane thrills. Audiences got a character study instead.

This Paramount+ release is a second chance. Without the pressure of opening weekends and direct comparisons to Tom Cruise’s billion-dollar baby, Dillard’s work can breathe. The aerial sequences here aren’t about speed; they’re about weight. You feel the rattle of the engine. It’s claustrophobic, not liberating.

Why Streaming Makes Sense

Mid-budget war dramas are an endangered species in theaters. We all know this. Unless you have Nolan’s name on the poster or a Marvel-sized budget, getting people to drive to a multiplex for a historical biopic is a losing battle.

On Paramount+, however? This plays. It fits perfectly into that Sunday afternoon slot where you want something substantial but not exhausting. It’s a better film than its box office receipts suggested, mostly because it suffered from an identity crisis forced upon it by the Top Gun phenomenon.

When you watch it in January, look at the color grading. Look at how Dillard frames the sky. It’s not about freedom; it’s about danger. That’s a distinction the trailers completely missed, but the film nails.

Powell has leaned into this aviator persona hard since—getting his pilot’s license for Maverick, producing The Blue Angels documentary with J.J. Abrams—but Devotion remains the outlier in his flight log. It’s the “serious one.” The one that wanted Oscars rather than popcorn buckets. Whether that second chance materializes on streaming depends entirely on whether viewers can forget the marketing and actually see the film Dillard made.

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What to Know Before Streaming Devotion

• This is not Top Gun 3. Adjust expectations for a slower, heavier character study rather than action spectacle.
• The history is significant. Based on the true story of Jesse Brown, the Navy’s first Black aviator, and his friendship with Tom Hudner during the Korean War.
• Practical aerial footage. Dillard used real aircraft and in-cockpit cameras, emphasizing the mechanical fragility of 1950s aviation over CGI polish.
• Jonathan Majors co-leads. The film hinges as much on Majors’ portrayal of Brown as it does on Powell’s Hudner—arguably more so.

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