Review of Red Tails (2012) by Ming120 — 20 Jan 2012

I had been wanting to watch this movie since I first saw the trailer. Now that I have seen it, it pains me that I have to give it such a low score. It had so much potential and is based on the kind of people I admire. I'm a pilot myself, and an aviation buff, and while I don't normally go out to watch just any movie, anything that captures the exciting moments and challenges of flight, especially the roar of a Packard version of a Merlin strapped to a P-51, is enough to give me pause. Movies like these are a rarity these days so I had high hopes, but in a lot of ways, this movie simply crashed and burned. (Note: Spoilers ahead).

The problem with this movie is that it lacked depth and realism. I feel that it never quite adequately depicted the struggles and challenges faced by the Tuskegee airmen and never really offered any antagonizing moments through the duration of the film. You see some racial discrimination in this movie, but it is displayed in such a blunt manner that you begin to really question it's meaning. It can go a something like this: White B-17 pilot spots a black pilot flying a P-51. "Hey everybody, doesn't look like we're getting much help here," says the white pilot (though quite frankly, I think most bomber crews would be grateful for any escort, no matter their color). That's literally as much as you'll expect in this movie. It's nothing like Men of Honor, where one actually has to struggle through bigotry--in this movie, it just happens, and how our heroic black men pull out of this is by simply being bad ass.

I can give the movie a bit of praise for it's CGI action scenes, for they do look neat, but they seemed tacked on. They do a great job in depicting the Tuskegee airmen like aces, and I believe, historically, they were in fact a forced to be reckoned with. They also depict the Luftwaffe pilots as arrogant bastards and lack any kind of aerial competence. Just watching the pretty dogfights were a bit painful, not because they lacked artistic elegance, but because the whole movie was pretty one-sided. The Tuskegee airmen lost about 3 P-51s (I was counting), while they destroyed about half the German Luftwaffe including jets, a battleship, and a train. Oh my! You also see tacked on romances, which I feel is unnecessary for a film like this and seems to do more harm than good. I won't go into the details, but it seems as forced as rest of the movie and takes up valuable film. Romances can be interesting in some movies, provided there is more narrative. Unfortunately, this is not the case in this movie. The characterization was a little weak as well. The depictions of the Tuskegee airmen were interesting, and each character had a unique personality. Unfortunately, it goes a little too far and depicted the boys each with discreet problems. You have a womanizing macho pilot, a self-pitying squadron leader, a young lad who can never stand with the rest, and a few others that are just contrasted a bit too loudly. The Caucasian characters in the movie are even worst, with dry lines that seem to focus way too much on antagonizing the black race. There is also a pretty Italian woman that was tacked on to part of the story. Unfortunately, she lacked narrative, backstory, and only had a few lines to say, which rendered her role insignificant.

I greatly admire the Tuskegee airmen and what they did back in the war, but quite frankly, I think this movie didn't do them great justice. Realism was stretched beyond belief here, and I think in a movie like this, you need a little bit of realism to portray the drama. Seeing a German ME 262 Jet going head on with a P-51, both exchanging gunfire until the bitter end is probably enough to make anyone who knows anything about aviation, especially pilots, cringe. That, and shooting down half the German Luftwaffe makes me feel that whoever wrote this movie simply didn't do enough homework.

I really wanted to like this movie. It had so much potential. The cast seemed appropriate. It was the execution that seemed disappointing. I this this movie might appeal to some people, but for anyone wanting a film that is a little more serious, they might be in for some disappointment...