Starring: Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard
Directed By: Anthony Hemingway
Screenplay By: John Ridley and Aaron McGruder
Story By: John Ridley
Produced By: Rick McCallum and Charles Floyd Johnson
Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: Approximately 125 minutes
Budget: $58 million
Genre: Action/Adventure/Historical Drama
Release Date: January 20, 2012
A colleague of mine, who’s a history and pop culture buff, recently reminded me that during the late-1930s and into the 1940s, Hollywood cranked out war-themed movies left, right and center to a patriotic and largely appreciative movie-going public. And that’s not including the hundreds – possibly thousands – of wartime newsreels that were produced here in the states and abroad that were shown at movie theaters before the main attraction.
One would likely be hard-pressed to find much by way of newsreel footage that paid serious consideration – much less gratitude – to the hard work and personal sacrifice of the largely unsung Tuskegee Airmen, an all-black Army Air Corps unit that flew and fought for the US of A during WWII.
Red Tails, a big-budget film treatment of the Tuskegee Airmen’s legacy, which billionaire filmmaker George Lucas (creator of the beloved Star Wars trilogy and it’s not-so-celebrated prequels) spent 23 years and nearly $100 million of his own money to shepherd to the big screen is an important film to see in that it casts a bright spotlight on a part of American history that is embarrassingly little known. I personally don’t recall ever being taught a thing about the Tuskegee Airmen during my junior high/middle school/high school years. To the best of my knowledge, they weren’t even mentioned among the footnotes in any of my history textbooks.
So it came as no surprise when according to Lucas, every Hollywood studio he approached with his passion project turned him down flat arguing that there wasn’t a market for a big-budget period film with an all-black cast.
That theory was proven wrong when the film opened last weekend to the tune of $18.7 million, securing the second place position at the domestic box office. Lucas’ $100 million gamble has seemingly paid off. I just wish that the same passion and drive he invested in order to get the film made was as apparent in the final product. It’s not a bad film, by any stretch, but it leaves something (greater, grander, more robust, more substantial) to be desired.
As written by Mequon-native John Ridley (U-Turn) and “Boondocks” creator Aaron McGruder, the Tuskegee Airmen are a close-knit assortment of flyboys who not only made history by their mere presence and actions but looked good doing it. Every actor, with two notable exceptions, is called upon to play one or two dimensions instead of three. Only Nate Parker (The Great Debaters, Pride) as the regimen’s upstanding mission leader, and especially David Oyelowo (The Last King of Scotland, The Help) as a hotheaded yet prodigiously talented ace pilot in the vein of Top Gun’s Maverick, manage to rise above the hokey earth-bound material.
It’s when Red Tails takes flight that the film itself follows suit. The aerial sequences are thrilling and the actors actually appear to be the ones manning the controls of the P-51s (also known as “red tails“ due to the distinctly red paint on the planes’ tails, hence the title) shown in the film. Aside from Parker and Oyelowo, other notable actors playing members of the unit include R&B singer Ne-Yo (attempting some sort of weird dialect), Michael B. Jordan (formerly of NBC/DirecTV’s “Friday Night Lights), rapper Clifford “Method Man” Smith (How High, Garden State), and Marcus T. Paulk (who played Brandy’s little brother on the UPN sitcom “Moesha”).
Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr. (Jerry Maguire) is the unit’s sage commanding officer, and Oscar nominee Terrence Howard (Hustle and Flow) is the major in charge of the unit who wages a campaign for equality. Both actors have played Tuskegee Airmen before, Gooding in the 1995 Emmy Award-winning HBO made-for-television movie, “The Tuskegee Airmen” opposite Laurence Fishburne, Mekhi Phifer, Courtney B. Vance, Allen Payne, Malcolm Jamal Warner, and Andre Braugher; and Howard in the Bruce Willis/Colin Farrell-led WWII drama Hart’s War.
The Tuskegee Airmen proudly served their country while being subjected to institutional racism that kept them from fighting alongside their white counterparts, until 1941, when thanks to the actions of three women (Mary McLeod Bethune, a member of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “black cabinet“; Willa Beatrice Brown, a famed pilot and the first black woman to receive a commission in the nation’s Civil Air Patrol; and finally then-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who helped to persuade her husband to integrate the armed forces following an eye-opening visit to the Tuskegee Institute, at Bethune’s urging) they were finally allowed to go to war – with certain stipulations of course. The film negates to mention the ladies’ involvement.
Omissions such as this, the use of cartoon-like villains in the film – especially three-time Emmy winner Bryan Cranston (AMC’s “Breaking Bad”) as a vehemently racist colonel hell-bent on keeping the unit away from battle – and the decision to underplay the severity of the institutional racism the airmen surely suffered are all narrative shortcomings.
Besides HBO’s “The Tuskegee Airmen,” PBS has aired two documentaries about the unit: 2002’s “The Tuskegee Airmen“ and 2008’s “Red Tails Reborn.”
They, like the admirable but flawed Red Tails, are worth a look.
Grade: 2.5 stars (out of 5)
