Review No.108: Red Tails

It seems these days that George Lucas only wants to tweak with films he's already had hand in for example his constant alterations to the Star Wars franchise however it seems that he does have other ideas up his sleeve. Take Red Tails, an film that Lucas has been wanting to make since the late 1980s, which focuses on the work of African American airmen towards the end of World War 2. The film, which Lucas has produced as well as directing some of the post-production re-shoots, introduces us to the Tuskegee Airmen who are being used for simple ground attack missions against freight trains and enemy ground transport. The group include the alcoholic 'Easy', the risk-taking Lightning who ends up romancing an Italian woman, 'Ray Gun' who is often referred to as Junior by his colleagues as well as the wise-cracking Joker. The men are led by the pipe-smoking Major Stance and the inspirational Col Bullard, played by Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard respectively, it is the latter who is able to secure the men more important missions escorting bombers during their mission. The men are given better planes which are given painted red tails to mark them out as different from the rest of the airmen however it isn't all plain flying when Ray Gun is captured and taken to a prisoner of war camp. As you would imagine before the end of the day some of the 'Red Tails' die while others become heroes but what seems most important to Lucas is to put in as many scenes of the airmen flying as humanly possible which is a shame as these are some of the dullest parts of the film.

Being nasty about a film as good-natured Red Tails and its clear that this is a passionate project for Lucas who at least is able to get across the good job that these men did and why they deserved to be honoured. Of the cast I thought Howard was a stand-out however David Oyelowo as Lightning was fairly compelling in his subplot where he romanced the beautiful Sofia despite the fact neither spoke the other's language. The problem is that there are far too many characters that no-one really gets a chance to shine and I felt there was far too much time devoted to some of the aerial sequences and it was as if Lucas was trying to make his own Saving Private Ryan. To me at least the whole thing felt a bit like a TV movie of the week from the cheap-looking opening title sequence to some of the initial dialogue such as one airman yells out, 'German, Let's Get him.' The Italian locations, most of which were shot in Prague, makes the film look more like an Olive Oil commercial while Cuba Gooding Jr.'s instance of his character smoking a pipe seems like something Joey would do in Friends so I couldn't help but laugh every time I saw him. I can't say the film was poorly directed by Anthony Hemmingway, whose most famous for directing episodes of The Wire, and indeed one of the joys is spotting how many former cast members of the Baltimore show are in Red Tails such as Andre 'Bubbles' Royo, Tristain 'Michael' Wilds and Michael 'Wallace' B. Jordan. Overall this was an undemanding film was overly long aerial sequences with far too many characters and subplots to take on but I feel that Lucas has still created a very worthy historical film which does at least paint these men as the heroes they were.



Verdict: A very worthy film with a smattering of good performances is ruined by overly long aerial sequences, far too many characters and an overall sense of smugness so for those reasons I can only give it 5.5/10