trophywife's Movie Review of Red Tails

The Crash and Burn of Red Tails
trophywife - wrote on 01/26/12

According to several articles I have read lately, it has been George Lucas’ intention to make a film about the Tuskagee Airmen since the 1980’s, but he hasn’t been able to find a studio that would support it, claiming that audiences wouldn’t be interested in seeing a movie with an all black cast. I don’t know if they really believed that or if they were just too afraid to tell George that his script was corny and disappointing, but whatever the case may be, Mr. Lucas had to fund the project with his own spare change…no doubt last Tuesday’s Star Wars action figure sales covered it nicely.

THE GOOD: If you are unfamiliar with the premise of this film, it recounts the history of the first African American military aviators in the United States Armed Forces—the Tuskagee Airmen, who fought in World War II during a time of rampant bigotry and racial segregation. The concept is a worthy and fascinating one, and I was highly anticipating a great and inspiring film. With actors like Cuba Gooding, Jr. (Major Emmanuel Stance) and Terrence Howard (Col. A.J. Bullard), you would expect some really fine work. Well, lower your expectations. The idea behind this movie had real potential, and the fact that we are given the opportunity to see these men prove that they are every bit as talented and brave—if not more so—than their Caucasian counterparts, IS inspiring. However, among ALL the actors in the film, black and white alike, only one of them seemed to be slightly more than one dimensional, and that was David Oyelowo, who played Joe “Lightening” Little, a likeable but somewhat reckless pilot who is completely averse to following orders and aspires to be the Tom Cruise of Tuskagee (referencing Maverick in Top Gun, for anyone who thought I was taking another pot shot at Tom Cruise again). Mr. Ayelowo is mostly believable and comes across as a character that has some depth, in a crowd of others who deliver line after cheesy line, which brings us to…….

THE BAD: How someone can take such a striking and courageous part of history and insert such inane and absurdly ridiculous storylines and wordings is beyond the scope of my understanding. For example, we have the airman (Oyelowo) who, while flying by an Italian town, somehow manages not only to spot a beautiful woman hanging up her laundry, but is then miraculously able to locate exactly where she lives. Following this logic, these two end up falling madly in love, even though she speaks 2 words of English and he speaks even less Italian—not to mention that under Mussolini’s rule, interracial marriage was about as accepted in Italy as it was in the US. Apparently we had to have a romantic storyline to distract us from the all the bad acting. Egads. It would have been more endearing to focus on the families these men left behind than to try and create a love story in what should have been a heart wrenching historical piece. For good measure, there is also some German guy that keeps showing up to, apparently, make sure we understand that the Germans are the BAD guys in all of this, and he keeps spewing stupid lines like “Die you foolish African!” And as bad as all the acting was, as insipid as the dialogue seemed to be, my brain finally reached it’s aneurysm point when, in what I can only assume was someone’s misguided attempt to lighten things up, a white soldier says to “Junior” (played by Tristan Wilds) “well, at least they won’t be able to see you in the dark”. This is in reference to a group of soldiers attempting to break out of a German POW camp in the middle of the night. Groan.

THE UGLY: Racism, plain and simple. When some white soldier in an Italian officer’s club spouts off the N word, it’s uncomfortable and it’s sadly a fine example of the stupidity that abounded at the time, and that unfortunately still carries on today with some people.

When our kids were little, we drove out to California from Colorado to take them to Disneyland, and, as a surprise, to take them to the ocean. We thought it would be fun to tell them that we were taking them to the world’s largest swimming pool and to see the look of joy and amazement on their faces when we got there. Instead they started to cry and were kind of angry at us for misleading them. Not that the ocean wasn’t NICE and all, but where was the diving board and giant waterslide?!
I felt kind of the same way after walking out of this movie---the story of the Tuskagee Airmen is a good one, but I was led to believe this film would be GREAT and they did a huge disservice to these amazing men by trying to glamorize it instead of just letting the story be told. Somehow they managed to turn an ocean into a swimming pool with no waterslide.

The Trophy Wife gives this movie 2 trophies.

Red Tails has a running time of 2 hours and is rated PG-13 for some wartime images of violence. (No F word, but the N word is used)