Delayed Reaction: Red Tails

Premise: A dramatization of the wartime missions of the Tuskegee Airmen.

 

Lucasfilm has an odd history of films. Typically, we think of it as Star Wars, and that's what Disney purchased it for. There are other properties in that catalog, and they are a motley group. A couple make sense. The Indiana Jones movies are obviously there and of course American Graffiti too. George Lucas founded American Zoetrope with Coppola and has a couple movies co-produced by that and Lucasfilm, like Tucker: A Man and His Dream. I sort of remembered Willow was a Lucasfilm product. I forgot that Howard the Duck was too. They had Strange Magic leftover when Disney purchased them, which they released very quietly in 2015. Then there's Red Tails. Where did that come from? And that wasn't even a co-production. It was fully a Lucasfilm idea. Between milking Star Wars and Indiana Jones, Lucas decided he wanted to get this made for whatever reason. I'm going to miss the occasional weird Lucasfilm release, because I don't see Disney using the studio for something like a Red Tails.

 

Red Tails is a painfully sincere war movie, and that's both what works about it and why many people won't like it. It's about the Tuskegee Airmen: the famous mostly black group of airmen for the U.S. Military in WWII. It has an impressive cast, especially for 2009* - well before Michael B. Jordan, David Oyelowo, or Leslie Odom Jr. were names in Hollywood. It's the kind of optimistic movie that solves racism by the end because people learn to respect the Red Tails (because they painted the tails of their planes red) for their skill as airmen. The characters are familiar archetypes, almost like the goal was to show how easily you could insert black soldiers into all the classic WWII movies without causing a stir.

 

*While the film was mostly shot in 2009, it had reshoots and a lengthy post-production that pushed it to 2012.

 

I think you can see the Lucasfilm of it in the aerial battles. The computer effects of those look great. They are exciting to watch. I even like the little touches like when it would go into the cockpit of a German fighter to have them say a little German really menacingly so that we know "These are bad guys". Also, I did appreciate the red tails by the end, because it did get hard to tell the planes apart without them.

 

This movie could absolutely go into some topics more seriously. There's a lot of nuance missing. It probably diminished the struggle of the real Tuskegee Airmen by making it look like such an easy fix to the racism. On the other hand, after the Star Wars prequels, does anyone really want George Lucas stepping in to add commentary into the screenplay?

 

I really enjoyed this movie for what it was. Personally, I would've enjoyed it even more if more of it took place in the cockpits, even though that would give me less of what turned out to be a stellar cast. Unsurprisingly for a production company that's so technology-forward, the best thing in Red Tails is the action. I appreciate that the stakes were kept simple so I could just enjoy the flying.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend