Red Tails

        Red Tails is a film about the famed, yet under portrayed, Tuskegee Airmen of World War II.  This was a pet project of George Lucas who has reportedly been trying to get this made since 1989.  Having never secured adequate funding, he decided to fund the project himself.  I had high expectations as I found the story has similar themes to one of my favorite films of all times; “Glory” and to a lesser extent, I thought it might match up to Pearl Harbor (which I felt didn’t realize it’s potential).  I thought that with George Lucas behind this, it could truly be an epic film.  However, while I found this an enjoyable and patriotic film, I felt that it fell short of my expectations (which I probably set too high).

The Tuskegee Airmen, under Colonel A.J. Bullard (Terence Howard) stood at the beginning of the integration of African Americans into today’s army.  Long segregated, Red Tails tells the story of how black pilots not only proved themselves capable and valuable pilots, but they excelled at it.  Created as an ‘experiment’ despite the supposed scientific research of the time, which said they would never be good soldiers (or airmen), the government stationed the Tuskegee airmen in Italy where they saw little action.  Thanks to the tireless efforts of Col Bullard, the airmen got their chance and proved that the were a force to be reckoned with.

George Lucas has long been known for being strong on inspiration and short on story.    Critics of his Star Wars sagas acknowledge his great vision, but often decry his weak dialogue and shallow stories.  I was thinking the same thing while watching this.  I wanted this to be a truly epic film, but it turned into a more of a Saturday matinee serial of old (hey, it worked for “Raiders of the Lost Ark”).  The Colonel and Major Emmanuel Stance (Cuba Gooding Jr) are played generically heroic.  It seemed like every time they said something patriotic music was playing in the background.  The airmen themselves seemed a collection of cliche’s from every war movie made over the best 50 yrs.  There was the frustrated team leader (played by Nate Parker who ironically portrayed the only character that had any depth).  The impetuous one named Lightning (David Oyelowo), who had the generic love story thrown in as all these films do (if you can’t see where his story line is heading, you haven’t seen a war movie before).  The of course they have the funny one, the grumpy one, the young one...the list goes on.  

The combat scenes were well done and kept you at the edge of your seat.  As long as they were in the air, they had my full attention.  Back on the ground it was less interesting and left a lot of areas unexplored.  The portrayal of the airmen’s struggle was two dimensional.  They felt like caricatures instead of real people.  The film ‘Glory’ excelled at giving us a real story behind the struggle.  Red Tails seemed to be a throw back to a more naive version of war.  I don’t want to pile on and say that this was a horrible film...It wasn’t.  It’s just that I wanted so much more and felt unsatisfied with what I felt could have been a truly epic film.

I’m glad to see an attempt made to highlight a truly great story from American history that we don’t hear enough about.  I just want to see better execution in the story telling

I give this film ** 1/2 stars