Red Tails

Right now I am settling into my chair for a bit of a long haul.  I have this movie review to write, a box office analysis piece that I write twice a week for a friend's blog, and then after that the goal is to write three thousand words of some sort of content.  Why this goal?  Well, it is a task to do that will exercise the mind, and it is also a step towards getting used to pumping out a large amount of words daily.  Perhaps one day I will seek an anvenue here or there with writing to make a few dollars, so I may as well get used to the process.

As the title states, the movie that I am reviewing today is Red Tails, the 2012 movie about the Tuskegee Airmen in the 2nd World War that had George Lucas as the executive producer.  Now, while Lucas was EP on this project, there were a lot of his finger prints all over the movie, most notably the visual effects, that would indicate to me that he was a very hands on producer.  The film was directed by Anthony Hemingway, and was his first feature film though he did do some assistant directing on movies such as Changing Lanes and Ali.  That being said, I am not sure just how representative this movie was of him, as it came across more as a George Lucas film....

The story of the film is about the 332nd fighter group, which was made up of African American pilots who were given meaningless tasks and assignments.  Desiring desperately to get into the fight and help out, Colonel Bullard (Terrence Howard) advocates from the group back in the States in an effort to get them into the battle.  It has become clear that most fighter escorts for bombing runs leave the bomber's side and chase down dog fights when they can, leaving the bombers unprotected and free to get shot down by the Luftwaffe.  After the 332nd is able to prove themselves in a key operation, they are then given the task to escort the bombers on their runs and make a name for themselves by sticking to their objectives.  And then everything that you could predict would happen, does happen.

The content of this movie is incredibly great, and a story that desperately needs to be told.  I enjoy a good WWII documentary, and they are pretty much absent of anyone other than Caucasian soldiers.  Perhaps that was the way of the times, but it is sad that the history that we are taught re-enforces that and leaves out tales such as the Tuskegee Airmen.  This content was very close to Lucas' heart, as he did a lot of the financing himself because studios did not want to get behind a movie where there were no prominent white roles.  It was a project that could have gone so far in educating, entertaining, and creating discussion around racial treatment in war as well as the on-going issue in cinema.  It could have... but it didn't.

Sometimes there is a lot that can be gleaned from the first line of dialogue in a movie as to the tone or even the quality of the script.  The very first words spoken in this film were tacked on, un-organic lines of expository dialogue.  Sometimes it is needed when there are so many complexities that someone just needs to come out and say it so the audience understands and recognizes, but it was nothing of that level in this film.  The script was incredibly basic, filled with out of place lines to inform the audience of what was going on (I think that was the sole role of the bomber pilot's dialogue) as well as very cliche lines about war time, or fighting, or honour, or something like that.  This content is passionate in its very nature.  There is an immense weight of hundreds of years of mis-treatment that are being represented here, and the script fell so far short of what it needed to be to properly honour the content.

I did mention the visual element being the finger print of George Lucas.  I will say this, the man really is a visionary who sees all things technical about twenty years before anyone else.  That is one of the downfalls of this film, though.  Over the last ten plus years he has relied so heavily on simulated environments, opting for CGI first before other options.  While digital effects can create images that would otherwise not be achievable, I do not think they were needed to create every aspect of the planes, right down to the instrument gauges.  Something tells me someone could have created instrument gauges that would have looked good.  Or they could have just gone the even easier route and shot pre-existing instrument gauges.

The biggest hole created by the visual effects was in the dog fight scenes.  This is a movie who's story and content deserve respect and are probably best delivered in a manner that feels real and palpable.  That element is not achievable with the dog-fighting visuals as the planes look great and real at some points, but other times they look exactly like what they are... pixels.  The one flaw that I noticed in Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is that everything looks a little too good.  Things look fake, not lived in.  Not properly scratched and marred, but a little to well lit in perfect soft lighting and in pristine conditions.  There was just such an absence of the signs of wear, tear, and war on the planes.  Everything just looked too good.  The aero-dynamics of the dog-fights seemed quite amped up as well, which made me feel more like I was watching X-Wings and Tie Fighters than WWII aircrafts.  The visual effects supervisor for the film stated, 'reality is not always as exciting or as good-looking as you would want,' and I totally disagree with that.  What better way to make me think there was a real plane on the side of the runway than to put a real plane on the side of the runway?

Why does this visual issue mean so much to this movie?  It is simple: the content demands respect.  If people are going to be properly educated on something then all of the right teaching tools need to be put in place.  In this case, we really need to know the experience these men were facing, both with racism on the ground and with their unity in combat.  If we see one full minute of combat and only 59 seconds look real, that one other second starts a disconnect in our brains.  The intensity of the story and the peril that they face is lessened.  Have you ever watched a movie and had to take a deep breath at the end it?  That's because you felt like it was a real place that you were co-inhabiting with the characters, and that is very hard to accomplish when we are constantly reminded that this is nothing more than a next-gen video game.

 In amongst this, there were some good performances.  That needs to be remembered.  I am a big fan of Terrence Howard because he is naturally soft spoken, so when he delivers powerful lines they really have a habit of standing out.  Bryan Crantson fans will be happy to see him deliver a great little cameo.  There are moments, here and there, but this movie does have moments.

When the action is happening, it can be a fun film, but that is all it was able to achieve with me.  There should be a lot more elements to a story such as this than just 'fun.'  I should have felt such an investment in the characters that I cheered for them, or wanted to punch those racist jack-asses in the face, but I didn't.  It is hard to get that into a movie that is so weak at the core.  Good script and great locations/visuals are such an important part of creating any kind of emotional connection, and both of those missed the mark in the largest ways.  I normally am not a fan of re-makes, but I look forward to the day that Steve McQueen or Lee Daniels revisits this part of history, because then the audiences will really benefit from the full potential of the tale.

Rating - 2.5 out of 4 stars