But the story needs to be told much better than it is in the movie Red Tails. Simply put, Red Tails is beyond disappointing, combining poor writing and some of the worst acting I've seen in a long time. Ultimately the blame for such a horrible movie falls on the director, Anthony Hemmingway, and by extension also upon the producers, including George Lucas.
The story here, being that it is based on history, is overall not bad. They managed to focus on a good selection of the air squadron, distilling many stories into just a few characters that we could easily follow. The problem was the execution. Much of the writing was very poor, particularly individual lines. Compounded upon that was the fact that the lines were then delivered so terribly it was unbearable to watch. Lines like "I sure hope those red tails are with us again tomorrow" are bad enough (in context). That the line is read in such a way that a high school drama seems better is just embarrassing. Not even Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard -two perfectly decent actors in their own right -could turn in good performances. They just are not given much to work with, and the directing is so obviously bad they must have spend most of the time feeling underused.
It's been a while since Hollywood put out a good WW2 dogfighting film, so most of the flying stuff felt fun and lively. There was once or twice that the visuals just didn't seem very good, but overall the dogfighting was the best part of the film.
I watched Red Tails hoping for something like a cross between Glory and Twelve O'Clock High. What I got instead was a hopeless mess with a lot of expensive sparkle. Maybe someday the Tuskegee airmen will get the film tribute they deserve. It just hasn't happened yet.
Entertainment: 3/10
Artistic Value: 4/10
Technical merit: 3/10
Overall: 3/10
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