Red Tails tells
the combat story of the 332nd Fighter Group, an Army Air Corps unit
notable for the fact that its pilots were graduates of the Tuskegee Airmen
program. It was an all-black unit
assigned, initially, to undemanding flying well back from the fight in the
European theater. The film
dramatizes their commanding officer’s fight to get them in the war, and it
lauds their remarkable success once he succeeded. It’s a great story and one worth reading. Unfortunately, Red Tails isn’t a particularly good film.
Even though Red Tails looks
professional and its air combat sequences are sure to thrill anyone with an
interest in that sort of thing, the film simply can’t overcome its leaden
screenplay and one-note performances.
Its villains, American and German, are ridiculous stereotypes who induce
more groans than fist-shaking. Its
heroes end the film no more heroic than they began it. Everyone speaks dialogue so clunky that
we spend half the running time wondering how much better the film could have
been with a first-class screenwriter.
Nobody changes, nobody grows.
A bunch of stuff happens to a bunch of good guys. At the end of the film, they’re just a
bunch of good guys who went through a lot of stuff.
This is a shame, really, because Red Tails is such a labor of love. Producer George Lucas worked for years to get this film
made, finally fronting his own money to pay for its production and
distribution. Some shots in the
film are direct recreations of archive photos of the 332nd. This film clearly worships them men it
depicts but, by presenting them so unidimensionally, it short-serves them.
I wanted to like Red
Tails. I’ll probably show it
to my boys and I hope they love it.
But its characters aren’t rich enough, its story not complex enough to
do justice to the real-life heroes it lionizes. Too bad.
