‘Red Tails’

Red Tails is an old-school action drama war movie with a pretty ambitious payload; twenty-three years in the making, big action dogfights, and an all African-American cast, screenwriters, director and film scorer.

A long-cherished project by Star Wars maven George Lucas (co-written by Mequon native John Ridley and “Boondocks” creator Aaron McGruder) Red Tails puts an overdue, big-screen spotlight on the Tuskegee Airmen, an all-African-American unit of the Army Air Corps that was segregated from the white units, subjected to bigotry, discriminated against on pretty much every level you can imagine, all while helping the Allies achieve air supremacy in Europe during World War II.

Before arriving at the screening, my hopes were held high for some amazing dogfight scenes, and a cast passionately performing a story worth telling. Unfortunately, I was only rewarded in part. The film was brought to life with with the spectacular dogfight scenes. This is largely thanks to the production team at Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic, which crafted sharp, super-realistic dogfight scenes that felt both lived-in and big-budget cool.

The material surrounding the dogfights, however, never found its true passion. Complicated characters are thrown in with comic book villians, whom spew narratively flat dialogue, accompany scenes of such absolutely rote dramatic content and weight that they could have been strung together in an entirely different order and had exactly the same impact.

I’m not sure whom to blame. The film’s executive producer (Lucas) has said, in interviews, that Hollywood powers that be were so resistant to making a film on this subject that he pretty much financed the entire movie himself, and good for him. But what does it profit a man to put his money where his mouth is on such a project, only to deprive it of any passion in the actual creative process? More often than not, “Red Tails” feels like it’s so cautious, that it becomes lifeless, which is a shame.

I would recommend only seeing this in theaters if you enjoy big-action, as the dogfights were well done. Other than that, perhaps rent it when it comes out on DVD.

-Erik

Red Tails opens today, January 20th, in the US.