REVIEW: Red Tails : Crimson Monkey

REVIEW: Red Tails

Saturday, January 21 2012 - Reviews - by: jared_cm

It’s kind of pathetic that it’s taken until 2012 to tell the story of the Tuskegee Airmen on the big screen. There was the made-for-TV movie The Tuskegee Airmen back in 1995, but that wasn’t nearly public enough for a story that deserves to be told. It’s also interesting that George Lucas of all people has been championing getting this movie made for over 20 years now. On the surface Red Tails seems like another WWII action movie, but it’s actually of great historical significance, being the first major big-budget film to feature a predominantly African American cast. This is what has hung up getting the film made for so long, because studios didn’t see that as being marketable. How far race relations have come, right? Anyway, what’s great about the film is that it doesn’t pander or patronize anyone on either side. It’s simply a great story that needed to be told, and while it does a solid job of it, it doesn’t quite hit its full potential.

Red Tails is intended to feel like it was a movie shot in 1943 and is just now being release, and in that first-time director Anthony Hemingway succeeds. From the static red opening credits to the completely one-sided American point of view to the over-acting and often cheesy dialogue, it all completely fits in that old war propaganda genre. The over-acting comment is not to say that the actors are bad, mind you. It’s all very intentional and just comes off as fun. There’s not a lot of character development, but just enough so you know who’s who and actually care if they make it back alive from a mission or not. For the most part the action vs. character-driven scenes are paced very well too, just giving you enough time on the ground to catch your breath and progress the characters a bit before flying high again. It goes without saying from a Lucasfilm-produced movie that the special effects are top notch, and the dogfight scenes are all shot and choreographed superbly, which is sort of the keystone of the film, so that’s good.

Where the film comes up short, unfortunately, falls on the director’s shoulders. I’m willing to chalk it up to it being because he’s not an experienced director, but if you get an opportunity like this to tell a story like this you really need to knock it out of the park and Hemingway just doesn’t quite get there. The cast shows time and time again that they are capable of great scenes, but there are also many times that are less than perfect, and if maybe they would have just done a couple more takes they could have gotten it right. I don’t know if there was a tight deadline on principal photography or what, but it’s a shame. There’s also some overall weird pacing issues dealing with some side stories that kind of go nowhere; like one airman Lightning’s love story that never really served to advance much of anyone’s character and the flight leader, Easy, who is struggling with drinking, but again nothing is really resolved there either.

Another thing that was very distracting was the awful score. Framing the film as a 40’s propaganda film gives you a lot of leeway as far as ridiculous music in the background, but this score is so all over the place it just doesn’t make any sense. A score should only serve to heighten a certain mood, not be an overbearing cacophony to compete with the rest of the sounds that are going on on-screen. It’s inconsistent too, in that some of the plane fighting scenes have no music at all (which is much better and creates much more tension) and some are just blaring seeming random music at all times.

Despite its flaws, overall the film is still actually a good bit of fun, rescued mainly by the great action and a wonderful cast that has believable chemistry. The movie also avoids the obvious pitfall of a film taking on this subject matter. It broaches the race issue with dignity and class; not demonizing the white man, not patronizing or pandering to African Americans, which makes it much easier for people of any race to come away from the film respecting these airmen simply as people.