I unabashedly love George Lucas. I am a staunch supporter of the Star Wars prequels, and love George’s passion and imagination, as well as his throwback approach to movies. I love that he embraces corny. When I heard that at long last he was bringing his cinematic telling of the Tuskegee Airmen story to the big screen with Red Tails, I was pumped. Did George live up to the hype?
In Italy in 1944, a squadron of black pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen were given routine flying assignments patrolling the countryside, deemed not smart or skilled enough to fight on the front lines with the Allied forces in Europe. When they are finally given their chance to support a group of bombers to their drop destinations, they more than prove themselves, being the first squadron to not lose one bomber during the run. Red Tails tells the story of the black pilots and their struggle with discrimination on the ground and war against Germany in the skies.
The story of the Tuskegee Airmen has been told before and George had no intention of telling the story again in the same manner. He wanted to give this piece of history its own popcorn movie, a high flying adventure featuring some of history’s unsung heroes. For the technical part of the movie, the aerial battles, George succeeds with flying colors. The scenes of combat high above the war are breathtaking and thrilling. The mostly CG planes looks staggeringly realistic and may be the most exciting aerial scenes ever in a motion picture. Where Red Tails falls apart though is on the ground. Even with my expectations in check, expecting corny acting and over the top drama, almost everybody still came off as too over the top with exceedingly high doses of asinine dialogue. Cube Gooding Jr. was obviously cast to sit in every scene with a pipe in his mouth and give either approving or disapproving looks at his men. And nothing more. The only standout in the cast was David Oyelowo as Joe 'Lightning' Little, the hotshot pilot of the group. He actually managed to give some emotional weight to his role despite the thin script and thinner performances all around him. Don’t get me wrong, I still can’t NOT recommend Red Tails, especially if you have a good home theatre set up. If that is the case, you must watch Red Tails just for the aerial scenes, they are definitely demo worthy for your TV. But plan to talk amongst yourselves during the scenes on the ground, anything would be better than paying attention in those instances.
The BluRay from Fox is stunning. The picture is near perfect with crystal clear everything and amazing detail, especially in the planes and during the dogfights. Never do the aerial scenes feel staged or CG-fake. They are realistic, thrilling and an incredible achievement. Likewise, the soundtrack is immersive and really brings the viewer into the midst of the battles. A thin script, silly dialogue and performances by everyone but Oyelowo detract from the overall enjoyment of Red Tails, but with such amazing action set pieces, Red Tails is still worth having in the collection for the infinitely replayability of the battles. Recommended.
