Red Tails

I have no doubt that the story of the Tuskegee Airmen would make a good movie. Red Tails is not that movie. A noble but misguided effort by executive George Lucas, directed by Anthony Hemingway, Red Tails is ridiculously corny and riddle with cliches. It is a film completely without nuance.

That said, it's not a disaster, as the dogfight scenes are very well done. Of course, this is all CGI cooked up at ILM, and somehow that makes it pale in comparison to a film like Wings, which used actual planes.

The Tuskegee Airmen were black pilots who made up a squadron in the segregated military during World War II. As the film begins, they have simple missions, usually involving shooting at ground transportation. The officer in charge, played convincingly by Terrence Howard, tries to get them more important missions, but is blocked by racist attitudes (the film opens with a title card from a 1925 U.S. army report that blacks are inferior and not suited for combat).

Finally they get a chance to escort bombers, and here is a bit of controversy. The film suggests they get the chance because white fighter pilots are all to ready to ditch the bombers and go chasing German planes. This is viewed as extremely historically inaccurate. The Tuskegee Airmen were brave enough as it is; denigrating white pilots to make them look better wasn't necessary.

Historical accuracy aside (apparently there is little that is accurate in the film), Red Tails suffers from god-awful dialogue and wafer-thin characters. Of the men in the squadron, we really only get to know two well--"Easy," the ambitious leader (Nate Parker), who has a drinking problem, and "Lightning," (David Oyelowo), who is the best pilot but also takes too many risks. Oyelowo has a subplot involving his romance with an Italian woman, which is sweet but brings up a lot of interesting but unanswered questions, such as how did Italians view black Americans?

There is another subplot involving a captured Airmen (Tristan Wilds) who seems to have wandered into a very truncated version of Stalag 17. This subplot is amazingly rushed and underdeveloped, and almost seems like an afterthought.

Even with all the bad dialogue and war film cliches, the most galling thing about the film is how little we know about the characters. One mentions he's from Tennessee, but other than that we know nothing. What was life like for black pilots in America--how did they get their licenses in the first place, when surely commercial airlines weren't hiring them? I appreciate that Lucas wanted to make a much longer film, but this doesn't do the Tuskegee Airmen any favors.