A review of George Lucas’s latest on the Tuskegee Airmen.
Though it took George Lucas twenty years to get Red Tails approved it was hardly worth the ninety minutes that it took to watch the film. Speaking as the granddaughter of a Tuskegee Airman, and having heard of the experiences of the Tuskegee Airmen firsthand, I, understandably, had high expectations for this film, hoping in earnest that it would improve upon the foundation laid by the previous film made by Robert Markowitz in 1995. I was sorely disappointed.
The basic idea is a good one — it is the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black fighter groups that fought the dual-frontier battles of World War II and homegrown racism. Red Tails, much in the way of its movie predecessor, is an attempt to both tell the story of the bravery and heroism of the men, and tell a seemingly obligatory love story – the addition of which detracts heavily from the main point of the film, the reasons of which will be explained in due time.
Despite the fact that the film features two of Hollywood’s veteran black actors, Terrance Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr. (mainly known for comedies – both intentional and unintentional), their presence fails to truly capture the audience given the fact that at the ripe-old ages of 42 and 44 respectively, neither is able to play convincingly men who were on average 18 to 35 years old. This point is further emphasized when one remembers that Cuba Gooding Jr. also starred in the first Tuskegee Airmen movie, seventeen years ago. In this way, both Howard and Gooding Jr. have already aged out of the ability to play the leads in the film. Age aside, their performances are underwhelming at best, the former spending the bulk of the film behind a desk and the latter seeming to exist solely to deliver ill-timed pep-talks to his men.
Another, perhaps the main, shame is that the real bulk of the action and dialogue is taken over by other actors (Nate Parker, Tristan Wilds, Elijah Kelly), who aren’t as distinguished or distinctive, and whose characters’ nicknames (Easy, Junior, Joker) are about all their characters have. Even when grouped together, their collective importance in the film is so minimal that it is barely worth mentioning. The humor in the film comes from the Nazis, whose dialogues are archetypically villainous, complete with long, sinister scars on their faces and biting quips about the “blacks who had the audacity to fight them”.
Eventually, Lucas just abandons reality altogether. A disturbing trend of strange inconsistencies and improbabilities begins to emerge within the film.
[Warning: Spoilers Ahead]
[1] One of the pilots spots a woman on the ground while he is in the air. He finds her attractive so later he tracks her down, woos her and manages to become engaged to her… all without being able to speak her language. Hold all the way up. Let’s break this down step-by-step. First, he spots a woman from his plane… on the ground, and is attracted to her. If his plane is flying at the height at which planes do during a dogfight, how was he able to spot her on the ground? Even if he were somehow close enough to even make out her gender, how could he see her face from the plane? This act is analogous to checking out the face on a Barbie doll from two football fields away. Second, how did he manage to track her down? They were in a foreign land, in a time so far before the Internet that it’s not funny, and, it is not as if they had a lot of leave and/or down-time while they were overseas. Third, I hate to keep introducing reality to this situation but the woman was Italian. The pilot was African-American. The year was 1945. I truly doubt that this would have been a fairy-tale ending given the social and cultural mores of that decade; but, this is the stuff that great romances are made of – at least in George Lucas’ view.
[2] Another pilot takes on an entire bar full of angry bigots — and doesn’t even get a bloody nose. Unless being a pilot also gives one superhuman strength and an advanced ability to heal, I doubt that things would have played out this way in real life.
Red Tails is simply the latest in the series of failed movies about the Tuskegee Airmen. Though both films endeavor to do a lot when it comes to raising public awareness of the contributions that the Tuskegee Airmen made to the United States, none of the films on the subject truly capture the spirit or the culture of the group. Red Tails, racked with historical inaccuracies, contrived dialogue and improbable situations, speaks to what George Lucas does best, creating films that are interesting, but lacking in accuracy on a number of levels. Altogether, this film receives a B-, mainly for subject matter and the battle scenes, which, though obviously CGI, did not fail to entertain.
Whitney Lee ’14 (whitneylee@college) knows that one day someone will get it right.
The author’s grandparents are Ella Theophia Lee and Philip F. Lee, who proudly served our country in World War II.
