'Red Tails,' George Lucas' Film of the Tuskegee Airmen

"Red Tails," the George Lucas produced film about the all African American World War II fighter unit known as the Tuskegee Airmen, is an epic that is great on spectacle and broad themes, but light on nuance.

In a way, the movie, which stars Terrance Howard, Cuba Gooding Jr., and a cast of mainly African American actors, is a throwback to World War II era films about our fighting men doing battle against the evil Axis, slaughtering them in heaps. The twist in "Red Tails" is that the pilots in question not only have to fight the Nazis in the air, but a racist brass back home who did not think they could cut it as warriors.

Seeing the Tuskegee Airmen prove the General in the Pentagon wrong is a truly inspirational experience. The film opens with the airmen flying obsolete P 40s on routine combat patrols with the only action gotten is shooting up the occasional truck or train they happen upon. One of the pilots bemoan that he doesn't want to tell the folks back home that he spent the war destroying traffic.

Then, thanks to the effort of a sympathetic white general, the airmen get a chance to cover an amphibious landing and thus mix it up with the Luftwaffe. They do so with great alacrity, chalking up an impressive number of air to air kills as well as shooting up an air field. This feat is to the astonishment of a Nazi pilot who is out of central casting, complete with the dueling scar and the arrogance.

This feat in turn gets the Tuskegee Airmen new P 51s and a new mission, to protect bombers on raids over Germany. By sticking tight with the bombers and not chasing after decoys, the airmen manage to bring every bomber home safe. This awards them with new respect among the white airmen, whose sense of self preservation trumps 1940s era racism.

That having said, the movie lacks in any way deep characterization. A lot of the dialogue is corny. And there are a number of plot holes. But none of that matters. The movie got several applauds by the mainly African American audience in the theater where this reviewer saw the film. It deserved every one of them. The story itself is inspirational and the dog fights, which is much of the charm of the movie, were simply eye popping.

Source: Red Tails, Yahoo Movies