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Is it worth $10? No
“Germans, let’s get ‘em,” an American fighter pilot says in the opening moments of “Red Tails,” and with it the first of many absolutely terrible lines of dialog comes and goes. The sad thing is the story, about African-American fighter pilots during World War II, is socially important and deserves to be told. So why a script that’s a lot less hackneyed and a helluva lot more powerful wasn’t written and filmed I have no idea, but it’s a damn shame.
Inspired by true events, the story follows a squad of Tuskegee Airmen stationed in Italy in 1944. They’re told they don’t have the intelligence or reflexes to fly in combat, but their commanding officers keep them ready: Colonel A.J. Bullard (Terrence Howard, recycling his performance in “Pride”) fights Washington bureaucrats to get more meaningful missions, while Major Emmanuelle Stance (Cuba Gooding Jr.) tokes a pipe and says sage things to keep everyone focused. The fact that some of the pilots are fighting to return to the Jim Crow south isn’t supposed to be mentioned, so I won’t go there.
The pilots are a collection of stereotypes always found in war movies: Lighting (David Oyelowo) is reckless and doesn’t follow orders, but does fall in love with local girl Sofia (Daniela Ruah), Easy (Nate Parker) is the alcoholic squad leader, Joker (Tristan Wilds) wants to fly even though he’s medically incapable, etc. Of course to the Germans they’re all the same, and we know this because the German pilots say things like “show no mercy” and “die you African!”
George Lucas is the executive producer of the film, which may explain why John Ridley and Aaron McGruder’s script is so terrible. More importantly, director Anthony Hemingway’s visual effects render cool aerial battles that aren’t that impressive visually, so it’s not worth seeing for the showmanship alone.
No doubt there’s a great movie to be made about the African-American experience in World War II, but I have yet to see it. Hopefully “Red Tails” will inspire other, better movies that are a lot less pandering and a lot more impactful.
Did you know?
George Lucas allegedly funded the project with his own money: $58 million for production and $35 million for marketing.
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dhudak22
said:
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... Given that the film has only made about $36 million thus far, no, it's not likely to see more movies like this in the future. |
E. Harrison
said:
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... I haven't seen the movie yet but is what George Lucas said true? That noone wanted to fund an action movie with an all-black cast so he had to make it himself. If true, that is very interesting. And based on how this movie came out, is it likely that we'll see more black movies like this in the future? |
susaninflorida
said:
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... The air combat was fun to watch. It's a good family movie, with a bit of a history lesson too. Kind of like the old John Wayne pictures about WW2. I enjoyed the movie. |
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