Ratings:
The Daily: 1 of 5 stars
Rotten Tomatoes: 39%
More on 'Red Tails'
IMDB
Official Website
There is not much to say about “Red Tails,” George Lucas’ largely self-funded, 23-years-in-the-making ode to the black fighter pilots of World War II, except that it is bad — very bad, bad in a way that is perhaps not mutually exclusive with providing young boys positive onscreen role models or giving high school history teachers something to show in class on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving — but bad nonetheless, nearly unwatchable even, except when the planes are in the air, and sometimes then too.
The film fictionalizes an episode of American history that is at once shameful and proud — the moment when the so-called Tuskegee Airmen, African-American pilots assigned to the Army’s 332nd Fighter Group, broke out of the sleepy Italian backwater to which they had been consigned by racism and institutional skepticism, took at last to the skies and summarily shot down plane after plane full of Nazis.
Terrence Howard plays the group’s commander; deep in the Pentagon, he tells a bigoted superior (Bryan Cranston), “We have a right to fight for our country, same as every American.”
Meanwhile, back at the Italian base, Cuba Gooding Jr., pipe clenched theatrically in his mouth, presides over a group of brash pilots that include Easy (Nate Parker) and Lightning (David Oyelowo), two characters distinguishable in temperament mostly by the fact that one is a bit of an alcoholic and the other is a bit of a womanizer.
Individual characteristics apparently exhausted, the screenwriters divide up the rest of the clichés — God-lover, music-lover, curmudgeon, other curmudgeon — among a talented cast that also includes a whopping four former cast-members of “The Wire” (Lucas-designated director Anthony Hemingway used to work on the show) and the R&B veteran Ne-Yo. Exclamation points are the rule. “Germans! Let’s get ’em!” says one character. “I don’t want to play cards! I want to learn about dogfighting!” says another.
When the pilots get airborne, there is a kind of pleasure in the scenes, the same kind you might get from a particularly good video game or childhood fantasy — “How you like that, Mr. Hitler?!” says Lightning, banking his plane up after an improbably successful solo run at a massive German battleship. But Lucas’ reverence for his subject can border on parody. When a white captain, leading a jailbreak from a POW camp, says farewell to his new black compatriot, he sends him off into the night with a heartfelt, final benediction: “At least they won’t see you in the dark!”
The Daily: 1 of 5 stars
Rotten Tomatoes: 39%
More on 'Red Tails'
IMDB
Official Website
There is not much to say about “Red Tails,” George Lucas’ largely self-funded, 23-years-in-the-making ode to the black fighter pilots of World War II, except that it is bad — very bad, bad in a way that is perhaps not mutually exclusive with providing young boys positive onscreen role models or giving high school history teachers something to show in class on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving — but bad nonetheless, nearly unwatchable even, except when the planes are in the air, and sometimes then too.
The film fictionalizes an episode of American history that is at once shameful and proud — the moment when the so-called Tuskegee Airmen, African-American pilots assigned to the Army’s 332nd Fighter Group, broke out of the sleepy Italian backwater to which they had been consigned by racism and institutional skepticism, took at last to the skies and summarily shot down plane after plane full of Nazis.
Terrence Howard plays the group’s commander; deep in the Pentagon, he tells a bigoted superior (Bryan Cranston), “We have a right to fight for our country, same as every American.”
Meanwhile, back at the Italian base, Cuba Gooding Jr., pipe clenched theatrically in his mouth, presides over a group of brash pilots that include Easy (Nate Parker) and Lightning (David Oyelowo), two characters distinguishable in temperament mostly by the fact that one is a bit of an alcoholic and the other is a bit of a womanizer.
Individual characteristics apparently exhausted, the screenwriters divide up the rest of the clichés — God-lover, music-lover, curmudgeon, other curmudgeon — among a talented cast that also includes a whopping four former cast-members of “The Wire” (Lucas-designated director Anthony Hemingway used to work on the show) and the R&B veteran Ne-Yo. Exclamation points are the rule. “Germans! Let’s get ’em!” says one character. “I don’t want to play cards! I want to learn about dogfighting!” says another.
When the pilots get airborne, there is a kind of pleasure in the scenes, the same kind you might get from a particularly good video game or childhood fantasy — “How you like that, Mr. Hitler?!” says Lightning, banking his plane up after an improbably successful solo run at a massive German battleship. But Lucas’ reverence for his subject can border on parody. When a white captain, leading a jailbreak from a POW camp, says farewell to his new black compatriot, he sends him off into the night with a heartfelt, final benediction: “At least they won’t see you in the dark!”
