It’s a comic strip, but that isn’t all bad. George Lucas is involved, and Lucas loves the aerial warfare of World War II, when P-41s and P-47s and P-51s did battle with Stukas and Messerschmitts and Zeros, and our fliers outflew their fliers and shot them out of the sky in flaming crashes and huge explosions. He paid homage to them in all the “Star Wars” films, and his animation-aided dogfights made other aerial combat movies look like the Wright Brothers in action over the North Carolina sand dunes.
“Red Tails,” which opens today, is a tribute to the Tuskegee Institute-trained African-American pilots (“call us Negroes,” they tell white pilots) who fought American racism and red tape to be allowed to fly real escort missions over Italy in 1944.
But its screenplay is hopelessly awful. Everyone is a cliche, speaking in cliches and acting in cliches. Interestingly, director Anthony Hemingway and screenplay writers John Ridley and Aaron (remember Boondocks?) McGruder all are African-American, and that may be part of the problem, along with their age. Ridley is 45, McGruder is 37, and the black soldiers of World War II were very different.
The Tuskegee airmen were sent to Italy, kept isolated at a small airport, given old equipment and sent off to attack isolated trains and trucks. No combat, no duty flying as escorts for the Flying Fortresses. Their commanders, played by such as Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard, are career officers, used to their subservient roles.
The four young pilots are daredevils whose planes are extensions of their libido, are Easy (Nate Parker), the group leader; Lightning (David Oyelowo); Smoky (Ne-Yo); and Joker (Elijah Kelley). All are handsome and charming, and unused to discipline or following orders. Lightning is the best pilot and the worst offender; he also spots an Italian girl on her roof while he’s flying back to base. He finds her house, and while she speaks no English and he no Italian, it isn’t long before they’re discussing marriage, using up any left-over cliches. Of course they get around to sex, but in a rare switch of either movie or wartime priorities, that comes later.
With good acting and terrific special effects, audiences deserve a better movie.
Red Tails opens today at several theaters
—Joe