Red Tails [DVD]

The story of the Tuskegee airmen is a wonderful story full of genuine drama - heroism, overcoming of racism, America growing up in its attitudes, formation of what was essentially a highly trained and decorated unit despite every obstacle they faced. In this version though, the storytelling is alas so clunky, that no end of beautifully photographed postcard Italy and shoehorned romantic subplot or inserted action scenes can rescue it. There is a good looking cast and some genuine production values, but saddled with a script which from the opening scene seems amateurish and contrived, sapping the movie of the genuine awe and respect of the airmens achievements that they deserve. Cuba Gooding Junior needs to find something gritty to rebuild his career, and Terence Howard survives the movie with some dignity and gravitas, but the lines and situations they are given to handle are flat and artificial. The movie charts the pilots in the squadron, trying to show their different ways of handling the stress, while building up from their initial delegating of trivial flying tasks to their escorting of bombers to Berlin, against a squadron (!) of German jet fighters. There is less a plot, more a series of subplots charting the evolution of the squadron - and some of those subplots just go nowhere. When one of the pilots was captured and we see him arrive at a PoW camp, I thought this was finally going to show what it meant to be of African American descent captured by the Nazis, but no - the moment is squandered. If the script is handled in screenwriting 101 style, it isn't helped by the lack of weight in the effects - you'd have to say on the face of it, that the planes actually look very well rendered.. it's hard to imagine improvements in what cgi could do - and yet... they just don't look real, and the physics of how they are thrown around the sky doesn't look real either. How much more satisfying and thrilling it would have been to have real aircraft in dogfights - but I guess these days that may just not be possible any more.
At the end of the day, the Lucas brand, even only as producer, has not been advanced from his Star Wars days with this effort, and the movie plays out as if an adaptation of a comic strip - when what the story needs is something gritty and real to truly express the horror, the bravery and the historical importance of what the Tuskegee airmen did.

Overall I was disappointed by this movie. I expected a whole lot more. The special effects look ok, bit nothing outstanding. The acting was competent but nothing more. Would be fine for an early evening TV movie. Knowing a bit about he Tuskegee Airmen, I feel this movie glossed over a lot of facts. The level of bigotry and racism these men had to face from their OWN side and the struggles they had to face did not come across.

The Nazi's in this move come across as cartoon like caricatures with no depth at all. In fact, that could be a good overall description of the whole move, very little depth! Glad I did not pay full price at HMV or I would be even more disappointed!

Overall, I am not saying it's the worst I've seen. However, the movie could've been longer without the soap opera boy meets girl elements which simply got in the way.

As for calling it a TV movie, some TV movies can be good. Red Tails is quite inferior to another movie on the same subject, 'The Tuskegee Airmen' from 1995 Starring Laurence Fishburn and John Lithgow amongst other well known faces. Although a TV movie, with The Tuskegee Airmen one gets a much fuller, more rounded view of the struggles these brave pilots (and groundcrew) had to overcome and the fact that they were fighting a war on TWO fronts!

This movie makes a mockery of the true story of the Tuskegee Airmen and for that reason alone deserves your contempt because it will stop other film makers from making better movies about the subject for at least another 10 years. The 1995 Laurence Fishburne movie is better. If you're interested in the subject then do yourself a favour, stop reading this now and go and watch that instead.

If you're interested in a vacuum-headed movie that plays out like "Pearl Harbor" though, then read on.

You'd think that with such a rich and heroic story to work from that even George Lucas couldn't mess this one up. He's done the same, however, to the story of the Tuskegee Airman that he did to his own "Star Wars" by creating a movie that is almost entirely free of memorable characters and packed to the nines with ridiculous computer effects.

So the plot sucks, but maybe it's worth watching for the action? Nope. I'm afraid the computer visuals all looks kinda fake and crappy so you're entirely detached from the action. CG always suffers from this anyway, I suppose it's cheap compared to actually filming real aircraft though so we're force-fed warm spoons of it in everything these days. The CG in "Red Tails" is especially nasty though because it has a kind of dull flatness to it that screams FAKE at you in 100 foot tall flashing letters. On top of that the movement of the aircraft has that fake "spaceship" style CG look and also depicts stunts that the aircraft can't physically do. The idea of having a P-51 do a backflip to take out a bad guy may seem cool to the scriptwriter and is probably cool to most brain-dead movie goers these days, but if you know anything about air combat it ruins the scene. Do some research before writing drivel like this, please.

Don't even get me started on the whole idea of doing a movie which is ostensibly about racism while at the same time having possibly the most shallow and stereotypical German baddie I think I've ever seen. He even has a scar on his face. Where is the true story of air combat in WW2? The too-young men who are thrown into the fray day upon day, tired and terrified for their lives but not showing it out of bravado, on both sides - Allied and German? Read "The Big Show" by Pierre Clostermann and tell me again how "Red Tails" even vaguely reflects true air combat in WW2.

I LOVE the story of the Tuskegee Airmen. I love the irony that by being small-minded racists the US Army accidentally created an elite fighter squadron. This message is NOT conveyed in this movie and I think that's probably the biggest travesty of all.

In summary - don't expect much from this otherwise you'll be disappointed. "Saving Private Ryan" this ain't.