Red Tails

My wife was giving a bridal shower for one of our nieces on Saturday so I did the manly thing - I got out of the house and went to see a war movie. Red Tails had been in the press because of George Lucas' problem getting funding for this movie. It was also about an interesting part of WW II history. I expected there to be technical inaccuracies and exaggerations but, since it was Lucas, I figured the action scenes would be good. In a word, I was disappointed.

Except for the fact that he used black actors in airplanes, this movie could have been any generic war movie. It had all the usual suspects, cliches and caricatures. There was the flawed, self doubting flight leader, the cocky pilot who ignores orders, the religeous kid seeking acceptance. And they threw in a romantic side story for good effect. You knew within the first 10 minutes who was going to live and who was going to die because you have seen this 100 times. Lucas had an excellent opportunity to tell the story of a unique piece of Black American history and he blew it. (FYI, each service had black units. The Army had the 761st Tank Battalion and the Navy had USS Mason (DE-529). All of these units had distinguished records)

IMHO, Lucas had touble getting funding because the movie was mediocre. Save your money and give this movie a pass.