Red Tails Review

The story of the Tuskegee Airmen is certainly an inspiring and historical story. One that should be put in history books and taught in schools. It is the story about a group of African American pilots in World War II. Specifically they were the first group of African American pilots in the history of the United States armed forces. Watching this movie made me want to go home and learn more about them because if I was taught about them in school, it must’ve not stuck in my brain very well because I didn’t know much about them going in to this. Now I’m not a huge history buff, so that might be the reason, but who knows. Now Red Tails is a movie that is about the Tuskegee Airman. It is a movie that George Lucas said he wanted to make for quite a long time. It’s the first movie that he’s worked on in a long time that isn’t named Star Wars or Indiana Jones. After hearing this and learning what he is taking on, I was excited and thus went to see it on opening weekend. However, after seeing it I was extremely disappointed. It’s been a long time since I have been able to point out so many horrible things about a movie. And before you just write me off as someone who is anti –war and/or doesn’t like watching war/World War II movies, I will write you off as my critic right now. I enjoy war movies and enjoy World War II movies. And one day I think the Tuskegee Airmen deserve a great movie made about them, but this is not one of them. George Lucas should be ashamed. I was embarrassed for him.

Now prepare for a paragraph full of me ranting about a bunch of reasons why this film was bad. Where should I begin? How about the beginning. It was slow. I had a hard time getting into the storyline and even almost dozed off a few times. And in general throughout the whole movie the storyline was choppy and unorganized. I was able to follow it because I read up on the American Tuskegee before seeing the movie, but had I not done that I think I would’ve come out of the movie not knowing hardly what happened. It was also a bit too long at 145 minutes. Now normally I don’t mind long movies, but this one seemed to drag on a bit longer than it should’ve. Ironically though, the ending seem a bit quick. And by that I mean that it didn’t really finish the story that good. It just kinda ended. The script in this movie was terrible. The dialogue was cheesy and weird throughout the whole movie. The acting wasn’t horrible, but at the same time it wasn’t that great either. Some of the actors did a good job with the horrible script that they were given, but others seemed very shallow undeveloped characters the whole movie. Along with the story line, there were a few side tangents that just didn’t work. The romance story in it was the strangest love story I have ever seen in it. It was forced and disconnected while having absolutely no chemistry between them at all.  The other weird tangent was a scene where one of the main characters gets captured and tries to escape. It could’ve been a really good story line in the movie, but instead it was poorly done and thus didn’t fit in very well. The music was also annoying. It wasn’t a bad soundtrack, but the timing was off. There were times where I felt it needed music and there just was none playing. Then a few seconds later the music would play for 30 seconds and then just stop again. I won’t spoil the ending, but there was one scene that was very emotional but the music sucked for that scene and thus the power of the scene was lost a bit.

Did I miss anything? Probably. But what was good about the movie? The special effects were good. But is that surprising? Lucas is good at making movies with great effects, but sometimes I feel that is all he focuses on. But even with that, the movie felt like a video game at times during the war scenes instead of a World War II movie that was supposed to look like real life. But I am done ranting. Maybe you will like it better if you see it, but I thought it was awful. Almost Last Airbender awful. 4 out of 10.