Friday, January 20, 2012

Red Tails - 2 1/2 stars

George Lucas produced this movie about the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African American fighter pilots in World War II. At the start of the movie, none of the white generals believe that African Americans are as qualified as white servicemen. They are given hand-me-down planes and given the most meaningless missions possible.

At some point in the movie, they are given an important mission: to protect a group of B-17 bombers in a boming mission. In previous missions, the fighter pilots left the B-17s unprotected as soon as enemy fighters showed up. They would go off and dogfight the enemy planes while the B-17s would get shot down. The Tuskegee Airmen are the first company to actually do their job. No B-17s are lost and they get respect from the other men in the service.

The idea behind the story is great. This is an important chapter in American history, and it deserves a better movie. This movie is not very well done. The dialogue is hokey and corney, and it is so bad I can't believe Lucas didn't write the screenplay himself.

The best scenes in the movie are the dogfights. It's in incredible sight seeing hundreds of planes in the air flying around each other. This is the kind of air battle that wouldn't have been possible before CGI. The music works really well in these scenes too.

If the dialogue and story lived up to the battle scenes, this would have been a great movie.

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