George Lucas returns to the big screen with the retelling of the tale of the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of African-American pilots during WWII who, despite the heavy racism present in the armed forces at the time, gained fame and glory through their exceptional flying abilities against German pilots.
The film “Red Tails” focuses on four pilots in particular – Marty “Easy” Julian (Nate Parker), Joe “Lightning” Little (David Oyelowo), Samuel “Joker” George (Elijah Kelly) and Ray “Junior” Gannon (Tristan Wilds). Aside from Easy and Lightning, just about every other character in the movie is completely one-dimensional. Most of the dialogue between characters is in quick one-liners spoken into flight masks or incredibly clichéd conversations on the ground.
Where “Red Tails” fails with dialogue, it makes up for with action. Every plane is rendered beautifully on the screen and every dogfight puts you on the edge of your seat. These aren’t clean or simple dogfights either. Each time the pilots hit the skies it’s a fast and dirty fight for survival against the enemy pilots, and we see time and time again how brave and skilled they are.
One thing that detracts from the film is the lack of impact. Major events in the story seem to hold little to no impact for the characters dealing with them. When Junior is forced to bail behind enemy lines and is captured, nobody seems to care. There’s a moment of grief from Easy, but after that it’s as if nothing had happened at all. We see the other pilots walking around in high spirits as though their comrade wasn’t being held captive by the enemy.
Despite a brief conversation with a new pilot about the idea of death, there’s very little in this movie that suggests that these pilots are actually in a war.
One of the more difficult to believe characters was Major Emanuel Stance, played by Cuba Gooding Jr. It’s not to say that he doesn’t do a good job, but he oversells the part like crazy. Rather than placing his ever-present pipe in his mouth, he seems to chomp down on it like he’s taking a big bite out of an apple. He also does this in nearly every single scene that he’s present in. We seem to constantly be catching the Major at the start or at the end of a good smoke.
“Red Tails” is Anthony Hemingway’s first big screen directing credit. For his first time out, Hemingway has done a decent job creating an entertaining, if rather shallow, action flick.
This is a movie definitely worth seeing in theaters, if only to appreciate the stunning visuals and the action-packed story while they’re still larger than life.
Luke Bohannon