Red Tails
Here’s the thing about my letter grade for “Red Tails,” the action-adventure epic George Lucas took 20-plus years to produce about the Tuskegee Airmen: it’s not so much reflective of the film as a whole as it is the emotional pull the film had on me. The movie itself is a pure B-movie: cheesy dialogue; cheesier melodrama; and an emphasis on action over depth of character. But God help me, the movie was a fun watch nonetheless, and is a good primer for the story for the uninitiated who may not have seen the 1995 HBO movie on the Airmen.
At the start of the movie, The pilots of the Tuskegee Experiment, implemented by the government to see if African Americans are able to aid the war effort in the air, are in Italy, reduced to doing patrols and sitting around at the base, waiting to see if their commanding officer (Col. A.J. Bullard, played by a passionate Terrence Howard) can convince the higher ups to give them a chance to see real combat. After the opening credits roll, we see four of the airmen on a patrol in Italy, where they gun down a German truck, as well as a military train. The leader of the group is Marty ‘Easy’ Julian (Nate Parker), a smart pilot, but who also has a problem with drinking; his wingman is the cocky ace-to-be Joe ‘Lightening’ Little (David Oyelowo), whose desire for glory gets in the way of smart judgement. We also meet Ray ‘Junior’ Gannon (Tristan Wilds), a young pilot who would rather be nicknamed ‘Ray Gun,’ and Samuel ‘Joker’ George (Elijah Kelley). They have some skills, even if they are flying hand-me-down planes. It’s not long afterwards, however, that Col. Bullard is able to get his pilots the chance they’ve been waiting for to finally go against German planes: after providing successful cover for soldiers making a landing in Italy, the Airmen are enlisted to provide cover for bombers making runs further into German territory. Not a prime assignment, but an important one; though the pilots are more interested in shooting down “Gerries” (German planes), as Bullard and their leader on the ground, Major Emanuelle Stance (Cuba Gooding Jr., who also co-starred in the HBO movie), explain, “Our victories are measured by the husbands we return to their wives, to the fathers we return to their children.” Their rallying cry becomes, “To the last plane, to the last bullet, to the last minute, to the last man. We fight!”
Yes, that’s the level of dialogue we get in this movie, as well as lines like, “How you like THAT, Mr. Hitler!” In the works for 23 years, and this is the best we can expect from a script by John Ridley (“U-Turn”) and Aaron McGruder (“The Boondocks” TV series)? Well, it depends on what kind of movie you’re expecting. Because we don’t get a glimpse of the lives of the Airmen before and after the war, and get a minimal look at the bigotry and racism the pilots are subjected to during the war, “Red Tails” feels like one of those old-school, WWII films we got for decades both during (and after) the war: jingoistic, heroic, one-dimensional, and exciting. And from everything I’ve read and heard with Lucas (whose passion for old-fashioned heroics and dogfights is all over the “Star Wars” films), that’s exactly the type of movie Lucas was going for here. Taken in that light, the film he and director Anthony Hemingway (TV’s “The Wire”) made is a success.
But it’s more than just matching Lucas’s intentions with the film that made “Red Tails” work for me. First of all, the dogfights are fantastic, which should come as no surprise since it’s being produced by the man who revitalized the special effects industry with his “Star Wars” saga; I’m not saying they feel all that authentic, but they definitely have an energy to them that draws the viewer in. Secondly, and most importantly, the story just grabbed me. Sure, it feels like a gloss on history, and by Lucas’s own admission, there’s a LOT left of the story he wants to tell (whether he’ll be able to after the film’s mediocre box-office remains to be seen), but Hemmingway and his actors do right by these characters by taking their story seriously, even if the tone of the movie will no doubt inspire unintentional laughs from the audience. But that says more about modern audiences, who are more used to a visceral representation of war since Lucas’s best friend, some chap named Spielberg, made “Saving Private Ryan,” than it does about the movie itself. But the only person’s reaction to “Red Tails” I can truly speak about is my own, and all I have to say is, great art it isn’t, but it’s definitely a great story, and that helps me overlook the film’s sometimes-silly manner in telling it. Now, it’s time to learn the rest of the story of these unsung heroes.
