Red Tails Movie Review
Ha ha ha Lucas you fail again.
All you regular readers should have figured out by now that I have a very large axe to grind with George Lucas for ruining a cherished childhood memory of mine, Star Wars (Stormtrooper image courtesy of the Star Wars T Shirt category). If you don’t understand how he did this, or are to young or dumb to realize how much of an amazing epic the Empire Strikes Back is, then I suggest you spend some time at Red Letter Media checking out the Plinkett Star Wars review for Episodes I-III. I have come to the conclusion that while Lucas has claimed responsibility for Episodes IV-VI, the talented people who actually made the movies what they are were fired after EOS was made, leaving us with freaking Ewoks as a predecessor to the eventual doom manifested in many ways but mostly in the form of Jar Jar Binks.
So it would be fair to say that I went into this movie looking for reasons to trash it, but fortunately for me I didn’t have to look hard. The suck reasons are varied and many, and we will get into them in detail shortly, but while this movie may or may not be a commercial success it is definitely riding the short bus to movies. What gives me even more enjoyment of this failure is Lucas had all the elements to make a truly amazing film: a star studded and talented cast, an amazing true story to work with, and stunning CGI effects. All this and the movie still sucks.
Before we get to much farther into this dog let me say that I am a big proponent of civil rights advancement, and have great admiration for the men of the Tuskegee training program. Theirs is a truly amazing story, and one deserving of a truly amazing film. Unfortunately their story fell into the hands of George Lucas, who is to good movies what thalidomide is to pregnancy.
The movie is, of course, the story of the Tuskagee airmen the first group of African American pilots during WWII who fought with honor and pride against the Germans. It tells of Col. A.J. Bullard (Terence Howard-Iron Man, Hustle & Flow, Four Brothers) struggling with the brass in the newly built Pentagon in the face of rampant racism and negative stereotypes. Meanwhile unit commander Maj. Emanuelle Stance (Cuba Gooding Jr.-As Good as it Gets, Men of Honor, Jerry McGuire) leads the gang as they start out flying regular patrols well in the rear with outdated aircraft, eventually getting to support a landing and finally flying bomber escorts. He and his crew are punched out of the stereotype paper doll book: there’s the squad leader struggling with alcoholism (Nate Parker-The Great Debaters, the Secret Life of Bees, Felon), the hotshot rogue pilot who can’t obey orders and is constantly on the prowl for women (David Oyelowo-Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the Help, The Last King of Scotland), the younger pilot struggling to prove himself to the veterans (Tristen Wilds-the Secret Life of Bees, 90210 (2008), Half Nelson), the religious nut, the joker (named Joker-anyone remember Full Metal Jacket?), and a couple of country bumpkins. They each have a sub plot and story that does nothing, goes no where, and actually hurts the movie (especially the romance story so worthless and crowbarred it felt like a big weighty dumb story forced into a movie. Hey, I can’t be the king of analogies every day). Each one is an anchor even heavier than the one preceding.
It has been often said that George Lucas is not an actors director, and I don’t think it has ever been more apparent than in this movie. In spite of working with some of the most talented professionals in Hollywood he somehow managed to get them all to act like they were each passing a golf ball sized kidney stone. This combined with dialog that compares favorably only to a flesh eating virus makes each non flying scene feel like being smothered under a burning mattress. The antagonists were even worse. A blatantly racist commanding officer (Bryan Cranston-Malcolm in the Middle and one of my personal favorites, Breaking Bad) was so over the top it was laughable, and the evil German pilot (Lars van Riesen-A Brunette Kiss, Private Peaceful, the Parachute Ball) was laughable cartoonish with lines taken from the Ming the Merciless catchy one liner phrasebook (“Die, you foolish African!”). I guess Lucas can’t do a movie without a goofy fake character with dumb lines.
As for the racism, it was painfully drummed into our heads for the first half of the movie and then somehow just evaporated in the second half. I know Lucas is trying to do something for African Americans (possibly to make up for all the heat he got for racist stereotype Jar Jar) but Spike Lee he is not.
I will say the time spent showing the action in the air was exciting in the same way the dog fights in Star Wars were fun. The CGI was flawless and only once did I see a flight sequence I know for a fact was literally impossible. The one thing Lucas can do is CGI, and he does use it here. However, for every minute spent in the air with exciting combat you spend like five on the ground grinding through some god awful character development.
The stars. I’ll give one star for the cast, especially Cuba Gooding Jr., although he spent the entire movie with a big dumb pipe in his mouth like he was Gen. Douglas MacArthur. What exactly was that supposed to add? One star. The story of the Tuskagee airmen is one that deserves to be told. Two stars. Decent fight sequences and CGI effects. One star. WWII movie. One star. Total: five stars.
The black holes. Acting ran like a chewing the scenery contest. One black hole. Dialog that made listening to drunk guys debate politics sound good. One black hole. Characters so flaccid and ill developed I really didn’t care if and when any of them died. I wasn’t hoping they would die. I just couldn’t worry about them. One black hole. Each sub plot that slowed the story down. One black hole. Very few of the sub plots actually had a conclusion or, for that matter, a point. One black hole. A bonus black hole for the romance sub plot, which pretty much led to the most obvious ending in the history of war movies. One black hole. Pacing and editing from hell. Stuff jumped around in a fast/slow/fast method that made me want to scream. One black hole. At one point Lucas felt the need to channel Hogan’s Hero’s and include a POW escape plot that did absolutely nothing but add in some more worthless ground crap. One black hole. While the African American pilots were heroes of the sky, the portrayal of the Caucasian pilots make them looks like a bunch of undisciplined cowboys, not really reflecting well on the Army Air Corps. One black hole. The scar faced German pilot turned the movie into a comedy. One black hole. The instantaneous reversal of bigotry in such a pat and worthless manner (not so much a resolution as Lucas got bored portraying it and decided to drop the whole thing). One black hole. The film suffered from the war movie “We bought a tank, we are going to show a tank” syndrome. In other words, every scene’s background was so packed with jeeps, trucks, tents, planes, and more jeeps you couldn’t see the ground. One black hole. Some fairly grievous plot holes (If the guys were flying patrols well behind friendly lines, how then did they come across a German train?). One black hole. Total: thirteen black holes.
So a grand total of eight black holes. I feel pretty good about that. The movie, in spite of the great subject matter, was out and out dumb. Of course, the theater was packed and apparently it did pretty well for it’s opening weekend. Odds are very likely that the film will do fine and Lucas will never read this review or if he did even care. He is still rich beyond my biggest dreams. Still, I do feel a bit of satisfaction for this piece of tilting at windmills. I can see why Don Quixote did it. Should you see it? If you like airplanes and combat sure. If you want to somehow support the cause of 1944 Civil Rights sure. If you like good acting, direction, and story telling or want to join me in not supporting Lucas in any way then you should not (incidentally he plans to re release the entire Star Wars franchise in 3D one at a time. I am starting a campaign to not go see any of these and ask you all to join me. Don’t support this. Besides, we all know post production 3D sucks. Don’t fall for the hype)
By the way, Lucas has announced after finishing this dog he was going to retire from film making. I am of two thoughts on this concept. On the one hand I found myself singing “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” while doing a little dance in my office chair. On the other hand I kept thinking to myself “Why didn’t the house fall on the witch fourteen years ago before she made the Phantom Menace?” I do wish him a happy and relaxing retirement, with lots of sitting a beach somewhere not working on any of those pesky scripts or anything.
Thanks for reading. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. By the way, you will be seeing a lot of smaller posts by my guy Jason, who works for me and is going to be looking for interesting nerd stuff to post about. Basically these long blog posts actually don’t serve the purpose this blog was created for and I need him to make it actually work. He seems sharp enough. Look for my Underworld review tomorrow. Talk to you soon.
Dave
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