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I had high hopes for this; Cuba Gooding Jnr, Terence Howard, David Oyelowo and Bryan Cranston in the same film? Surely this would be a master work of cultural importance highlighting egregious racial slights in WWII which were - clearly - absurd? The topic laid open the opportunity for aerial combat scenes that would make Top Gun look like walk in the park given that it's nearly 30 years on and surely SFX would have improved exponentially - it's LucasFilm for crying out loud - George Lucas knows a bit about SFX, right? Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. WRONG. This was Red Tails, light. The Disney version of the story, if you will.

The acting, with the notable exceptions of Oyelowo, who tried SO hard to carry the film, Gooding Jnr & Howard who given their heavy-weight were woefully under-utilised but still shone in every scene (especially Howard) but who has Terence Howard in a film and only give him about four scenes? Who!? David Oyelowo's maverick-type character "Lightening" was the only character with depth, but even he struggled with the ridiculously poor script and naive plot formation as the film was a staccato of - largely predictable - events. Of course the dogfights and flying scenes were key but there was so much potential that was glossed over. insubordination, alcoholism, unlikely romance, fear and righteous rage at a government scorning them because of the colour of their skin! It could have been mindblowing... it should have been edge of the seat tense but nothing about this hit the nail on the head. It missed on every point. Direction, score, script, acting etc and even the aerial combat scenes were poor. It had no passion, or realism. There were a few good aerial moves but it was without emotional response, consequence or discipline!

For telling a true story, or at least based on true events and the Tuskegee Training program, these airmen were fighting to prove wrong (!) a Government edict that stated that Black people weren't smart, coordinated, skilled, brave or loyal enough to fly a plane in battle and would chicken out, as they were gutless. What a story to take part in!! Woefully disappointing. The moments of bravery, sentient, beauty, faith and camaraderie were glossed over, not enough made of them, and it felt like it dragged; I was convinced it was a three hour film as whilst things happened, they didn't *HAPPEN.* Overall it was too ... vanilla. This film shouldn't have been a 12A. It should have been real and raw and visceral. Oh what a waste.

This film opens with a CGI aerial battle that is literally of the quality I would expect from a direct-to-DVD film by a company like The Asylum. It's shockingly embarrassing for a theatrical release with a $58 million budget. Even the font used in the titles smells like a no budget film. It does get better than this, but not as much as it should. Explosions are all CGI and don't look like they exist in the same plane as the physical objects. Oddly, every German pilot in this film appears to be exactly the same person. Effects aside, this film is intended to play more like a 1950's era war movie than a modern one. That's a valid choice, but it doesn't play like a good one. The story is, on the face of it, an interesting one, but the narrative strokes are so unbelievably broad that the film really doesn't progress after the basic plot setup is done. Some of the actors do a pretty fine job given the one dimensionality of their characters (David Oyelowo is particularly good), but they have precious little to work with.

Red Tails is a movie about the Tuskegee Airmen. A squadron of black Army pilots who served with distinction in Europe in World War II despite facing racial prejudice.

The film was produced by George Lucas and it has some top notch CGI with the aerial battle scenes. The script is rather corny and flat as well as being fictionalised.

The four main characters are Marty 'Easy' Julian (Nate Parker) who likes to drink a lot. His best friend, Joe 'Lightning' Little (David Oyelowo) a hotshot pilot who is having a romance with a local Italian woman. Samuel 'Joker' George (Elijah Kelley) is good for laughs. Ray 'Junior' Gannon (Tristan Wilds) is the baby of the group.

The film is too uninspired, cheesy and cliched. It manages to get glorified cameos from Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr.

It's 1944 Italy. The Tuskegee Airmen are a squadron of black pilots finally given the chance to prove themselves in the sky, even while they're battling discrimination on the ground. The are given the task of protecting bombers sent to destroy Germany.

This stars a large cast of black actors most notably Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr. The story of these men is a whole lot of cheesy stale clichés. The filmmaker seemed to have concentrated on CG fighter action more than giving these men good story lines. This multi-story line is embarrassingly old school. If they could just do one character, that would be an improvement. And imagine if that character is real.

I'm a former US Air Force F-4 Phantom Weapons Systems Officer (backseater).

You know this movie is crap when you start with a supposed fighter squadron commander who doesn't know the difference between a SQUAD (thirteen infantrymen) and a SQUADRON (48 fighter pilots).

To paraphrase General George S. Patton, George Lucas doesn't know anything more about real aerial warfare than he does about f --- ing! (And George C. Scott may have said "fornicating" in the movie PATTON, but the real Patton used the real F-word!)

Lucas was absolutely the worst person in the movie industry to do this movie. This movie is only the latest of many giant steps down the primrose path which Lucas started the world's movie-viewing public with the first STAR WARS movie in 1977; I distinctly remember the documentary on the making of that movie, in which Lucas patted himself on the back for patterning his battle scenes after what he claimed to be the most realistic dogfight scenes ever filmed, and at the same time in the documentary intercutting his scenes with those from A YANK IN THE RAF which were absolutely THE phoniest looking flying scenes ever filmed! And he hasn't bothered to learn jack about aerial warfare in the last 35 years; he's just conned most of the whole world into thinking his cartoonish creations are reality when they're the farthest thing from it.

The technical fallacies are far too numerous to list. Lucas doesn't know the first thing about physics or aerodynamics, let alone the complexities of basic fighter maneuvering required to put bullets into another airplane and to prevent another airplane from doing that to one's own. He just makes his CGI airplanes do anything he wants them to do to fit his fantasies and fiction. Lucas is welcome to create his own sci-fi universe where he makes the rules. But for an "historical" movie like this claims to be, Chuck Jones could have made cartoon Mustangs imitating the Road Runner and cartoon Messerschmitts imitating Wile E. Coyote and his Acme gadgets, and they wouldn't have been any more technically inaccurate.

But that's just about the technical fallacies and impossibilities. One of the biggest issues I have is that this movie was incapable of making the 332nd Fighter Group look good without taking cheap, lying shots at the other US Army Air Force fighter groups who fought in Europe in World War II. And it once again demonstrates George Lucas's total ignorance of aerial warfare in World War II, if not his blatant disregard for the truth.

Fighters assigned to escort bombers did not fly in and among the bomber formations, and they certainly didn't stay there when enemy fighters attacked. Escorting fighters flew above and to the sides of the bomber formations, weaving in zigzag patterns to maintain their airspeed while staying even with the much slower bombers. To "stay with the bombers" meant disengaging from the enemy fighters and returning to the flanks of the bomber formation AFTER successfully driving off the enemy if not shooting them down within sight of the bomber formations, rather than pursuing the enemy back to their home bases. It was somewhat of an issue in 1943 when the P-51 Mustang had not yet been deployed to the front lines. The older shorter-ranged P-38 Lightning and P-47 Thunderbolt fighters did not have the capability to stay with the bombers all the way to targets deep in Germany, and the bombers suffered horrendous losses to German fighters past the range limits of the P-38s and P-47s. As more 8th Air Force fighter groups replaced their P-47s and P-38s with P-51s, tasks were rotated among the fighter groups between bomber escort and fighter sweep, the latter meaning that the fighters flew out ahead of the bomber route to intercept the German interceptors before they got within sight of the bombers, and/or destroy them on the ground on their own airfields.

Total abandonment of the bombers was NEVER condoned. The 8th Air Force was primarily a bomber force, and by the Fall of 1943 the B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator heavy bombers were endangered species. Jimmy Doolittle, the commanding general of the 8th, was no dummy; his doctrine of employing fighters in both bomber escort and fighter sweeps reduced the bomber losses to 20-25% of what they had been before the arrival of the P-51. The Italian-based 15th Air Force quickly followed suit with that doctrine. The promise in RED TAILS fictionally given by Colonel Bullard (actually a thinly disguised version of the real-life Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, Jr.) to reduce bomber losses by 70-80% was in real life fulfilled by all American fighter pilots in the European Theater. They not only reduced the bomber losses to a fourth of what they had been, but effectively eliminated the German Luftwaffe over their own home turf wherever they found them, and not just near the bomber formations.

RED TAILS insinuates throughout the length of the movie that the 332nd was the only fighter group that stayed with the bombers and that the other fighter groups violated operational orders and standing doctrine by abandoning the bombers in pursuit of German fighters for their own personal glory.

The Tuskegee Airmen of the 332nd had a more than honorable combat record and a story to be proud of, a story which could be told without trying to make other US Army Air Force fighter units look bad by telling falsehoods about them. The Tuskegee Airmen deserve better than that.

I actually saw a matinée of Red Tails today.

I'm not saying that any paid critic or anyone on this board is a moron, or that people steeped in World War II historical facts will like it, or even that those few who hate the original Star Wars Trilogy will somehow flip their taste and enjoy Red Tails. But. . .

Simply to represent those who actually saw the film, here is my two cents for and have the capacity to appreciate it. This is not the dry historical reportage that some people prefer. It pushes buttons, gets emotional reactions and laughs that it earns, and it was worth the wait. I remember talk of this project from the good old days when there were only great Star Wars features and no Prequel duds.

No disservice had been done to the story of these airmen. Though nothing feels left out and it doesn't feel especially episodic (a curse of most reality-based movies), nothing rings especially false. It is a genre movie: war flick. Racism is touched upon and shown to be ignorant, respect is given to the Red tails, and the tragedy that you expect actually can happen so even when there is fun there is the spectre of danger.

After enjoying this movie, many people may begin to study the historical details with this movie as a sort of primer. Be reassured that none of the characters bump into Young Indiana Jones. But also make no mistake, the pacing is good, the dogfights are cool, and it is a movie. There is no time wasted on languid ambiguous lulls onto which we can impose deep artistic intent. There is one high note that feels a bit forced because it is not explained and its timing seems like too much of a shift within a scene (I won't say where it occurs, but it's the one time I felt the hand of the adaptor squeezing something into the wrong setting). There is one piece of score over one scene, reprised part way into the end credits, that is borderline as to whether it should be included. The percussion feels programmed. The rest of the score is appropriate orchestra stuff generic enough that I didn't notice it, so it must have fit. Critic Richard Crouse said he thought because Lucas was involved, the pilots talk about women during battle instead of having just the task at hand in mind. So I was definitely listening for this. The fact it they do NOT chit-chat about a woman during BATTLE. Only bored on patrol BEFORE spotting a target, and AFTER a battle. I would not take points off for a character touching his girlfriend's photo, or a comic relief character trying to get good mojo from "Black Jesus." I thought those moments were fitting and appropriate, whether or not they are clichés. One character admonishes the believer with a paraphrased Han Solo line and another says that the new fighter looks like it is speeding while standing still (paraphrasing an off-camera Lucas line from Tucker: A Man and His Dream). But other than that the grimy fingerprints of the disgraced post Phantom Menace maverick are not evident. The ILM special effects didn't seem especially fake to me, even though they must have been, and even the non-famous members of the cast are delivered and memorable whether we remember their names or not. Good show.

For me this movie was a bit of a surprise. After hearing so much bad things about it, I was expecting the absolute worst. However if you simply take this movie as entertainment, like it was meant as, this movie is simply a real good and fun one, to be perfectly honest.

Seems to me that really the foremost reason why most people are hating on this movie is because it takes the historical story of the Tuskegee airmen and turns it into some overblown and over-the-top entertainment. But call me crazy, wouldn't it be exactly the same to hate on "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Inglourious Basterds" or "The Dirty Dozen" for the very same reason that it it turns WW II into entertainment. Or even better said; hate on "The Great Escape" or "Enemy at the Gates" because it takes a true WW II story and turns it into entertainment, instead of into a history lesson. And besides, this movie was never advertised in any way as a serious or historical WW II movie, so I just really don't understand why some people were obviously still expecting that from this movie.

It simply is being a silly, over-the-top, action flick, with an all black cast in it. That means it has a simple story in it, mostly one dimensional characters and lots of silly dialog and crazy, far from realistic, situations, which I believe was all done intentionally, also to give the movie a more old fashioned kind of feeling to it. This is really where all of the movie its fun and entertainment value comes from.

Visually it perhaps is a bit of a mixed bag at times. The one moment the effects for all of the action and dogfights are something truly amazing and spectacular, while at others it's far from convincing. It's almost as if they ran out of time or money at times and simply had to hand things in, in order to get this movie released in time. But overall this obviously really couldn't ruin the whole movie experience for me.

It is also definitely true that the movie is lacking some emotional impact at times. It's because the characters, no matter that some of them are being played by some great actors, aren't that well developed and the story at times isn't buildup that well. So it really all together is not a great movie but the good news still is that the entertainment value really compensates a lot and I can honestly say this was one of the more entertaining, new, movies I have seen in a long while.

So me advise to you is to go into this movie expecting a good and fun time and please don't expect to be educated or get any sort of realism out of this movie. This way you will surely be able the appreciate the movie for what it is and won't feel cheated of offended by it afterward. If you want to know more about the Tuskegee airmen, this movie is not the one to go to and you are really better off reading a book, or watching a documentary about them instead.

7/10

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RED TAILS, the movie about the Tuskegee Airmen that was produced by George Lucas, premiered today. My wife and I went to an afternoon matinée. We both enjoyed the movie. If the STAR WARS and INDIANA JONES movies were Lucas' attempts to recreate the serials of the 1930s and 1940s, then RED TAILS is his 1945 war movie. It has a very old fashioned feel about it, as if it had been made in 1945 and then stored away until now. I like that but not everyone does. The movie has received a lot of negative reviews from the professional critic class. Many of those reviews dislike RED TAILS because of that old fashioned sensibility. Apparently, war movies made now are only allowed to be cynical and anti-war. RED TAILS is neither anti-war nor pro-war, but it is definitely pro-heroes. There are no anti-heroes in this movie; the pilots and their ground crews are portrayed as real heroes. Some reviews opine that the characters are shallow and not well developed. Again, I did not feel that at all. The characters, including relatively minor supporting characters, seemed well rounded and each one unique enough that it was easy to tell them apart, even when they were in cockpits with helmets and oxygen masks covering much of their faces. Maybe some of the characters were stereotypes that we have seen in war movies many times before, but for me, that added to the period feel of the movie. Another common thread in the professional critics reviews is that they were unhappy that the movie did not devote more time to exploring the discrimination experienced by the Tuskegee pilots. I don't think this is justified, either. The movie does show the pilots experiencing discrimination, both institutionally in the way the Army assigned them missions and equipment, and individually in their interactions with other soldiers. However, it is also true that is not the main focus of the movie. The movie's focus is on the air battles and how that combat effects each of them in different ways. In interviews, Lucas has said that his intent was to show the Tuskegee Airmen as heroes, not victims. I think he succeeded.

Okay, that addresses some of the issues that are clouding this movie. For some of us, the question is; are the air battles done well? The answer, IMHO, is a resounding "yes." In making the movie, they had three P-51 Mustangs, one B-17 Flying Fortress and a C-47 available for filming. Everything else is CGI or full scale mock-ups. As is to be expected for a movie which had its visual effects supervised by Industrial Light and Magic, the CGI is outstanding. Squadrons of B-17s, P-51s, P-40s, Bf 109s and Me 262s fill the sky and look completely real. The dogfights are shot and edited so that it is not difficult to follow the action. There is none of the super fast cutting that is the bane of so many action movies these days. There is plenty of air action, too, though it was not enough to satisfy me. Of course, they could have made the movie nothing but air action and I still would have wanted more.

Is it a perfect movie? No, of course not. It has a couple of subplots (a romance and a prison escape) that are well done but not really necessary to the movie (though my wife would disagree with me about the romance). Some of the dialogue is a bit clunky, but what kind of George Lucas movie would this be if that were not the case? It is filled with beautiful aircraft, though, and for me that makes up for any shortcomings. If you don't mind a war movie that is not cynical but instead is about courage under fire and patriotism, then I think you will enjoy this movie.

I figured with names such as George Lucas, Cuba Gooding Jr and Terrence Howard that Red Tails had to be a great movie. I couldn't have been more wrong. To start with the acting was sub-standard, it was as though I was sitting through a high school play. Everyone was very robotic sounding, no heart and soul per se. Gooding's performance was his worse yet and him constantly gnawing away on his unlit pipe, which he was pretending to smoke became an ongoing joke, I think they meant to put CGI smoke in afterwards but perhaps Mr. Lucas forgot or ran out of money to spend. On the bright side it was nice to see the guy that played Rick Simon from the 80's show Simon & Simon was alive and well. The plot was absolutely miserable. Characters that had no place being there, in particular the Italian love interest of one of the pilots. It seemed like the intent was suppose to be a sidelined plot, but if that was the idea, it failed. She had no place in this story. All the white folk are made out to be racists, save a few kind officers who pull for the Tuskegee airmen to get a fail shake, the white fighter pilots come off as over zealot morons who abandon their task at every whim to chase decoys, there is an alcoholic pilot who would have been booted from flying long ago, the reckless one that does what he wants and disobeys orders, who would have been court martialed and discharged in the first 10 minutes of the movie, and the list goes on and on, it was unbearable. Also, in this movie, apparently pilots are not subject to the laws of physics and G-force. The CGI looked cartoonish. The fighter planes were doing stunts and manoeuvres that would be obviously impossible in reality. Trains that explode and derail when shot at by 50 calibre guns, it goes on and on...Look I know it is a movie and not a documentary, but it kills me when at the beginning of the film it boldly states that this movie is based on factual events. The only factual events in Red Tails is that there was an all African American fighter squadron who painted their plane tails red, PERIOD. Bottom line, this flick had B-movie acting, crappy direction, a God-awful script, corny dog fighting scenes, cheap CGI graphics, unrealistic physics defying stunts and a out of place musical score, hip-hop music over the closing credits, please. I wish I never saw this movie.

As a retired USAF Fighter Pilot, having flown 100 missions as an F-105 Wild Weasel over the hottest areas of North Vietnam, and recipient of the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and ten Air Medals, I found the movie to be excellent. I thought it was realistic in every respect, both in the air and on the ground, in portrayal of the various personalities that would be encountered in a fighter unit in combat, even the love scenes which were realistic but portrayed in good taste. After seeing some of the poor reviews, I almost chose not to go, but I am glad I did. I only wonder about the actual life experiences of the other reviewers. I could put a name on each of the pilots in that unit from my own experiences in combat.

RED TAILS is George Lucas's throwback to old-fashioned war films where the emphasis is on action over complex storytelling and the like. I know this film was panned on release but I found myself enjoying it regardless, at least on a superficial level. It's not on par with something moving like GLORY but it does tick all of the right boxes and even though parts of the story are clichéd, I was still engaged in the tale.

The script is nothing to write home about, playing out all of the usual characters from the wild man fighter ace to the gruff but proud officer and the rookie. The cast is undistinguished with only Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard standing out as the guys at the top. However, RED TAILS does offer plentiful action, and it's a lot better than I was expecting. Yes, Lucas is still obsessed with CGI, and absolutely everything in this film is a CGI effect (including a football!) but so much money has been spent in post production that the effects look remarkably good. This is a thrilling, old-fashioned adventure and one I had no qualms about enjoying. It's certainly better than the STAR WARS prequels...

My biggest problem is that I saw the 1995 film Tuskegee Airman and loved it. I had to compare this current film to that and unfortunately found it extremely lacking.

I don't feel any connection to the characters in this film. Live or die, who knows or cares.

Contrasting that with the Tuskegee Airman, when people died in that film, you felt it. You cared about each single character and were emotionally invested with them.

So my saying, wait for DVD, and if you want a much better film, buy the Tuskegee Airman. You wont be disappointed.

For 24 years, George Lucas has been developing a film about the Tuskegee Airmen, the all African American squad of army pilots during World War II. Now, the dream has come true and the final result of "Red Tails" is a too long, tedious, all noise and no heart time killer. It makes one yearn for the memories of Lucas's "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones".

In 1944 Italy, a group of four army pilots has been summoned to protect bombers over Germany. Along the way, they have encounters with friendship, romance, danger and overcoming death.

The film's director, Anthony Hemingway should have stuck to directing TV shows before filming this lackluster effort. John Ridley and Aaron McGruber's script feels third rate and mostly shifts into territories of melodrama and clichés. They should have taken out the bad subplot involving a romance between an Italian girl and one of the pilots and remained focused to expand on the story of the Airmen. The art direction looks like it's been borrowed from too many movies and the action sequences fails to generate any thrills. The visual effects from Industrial Light and Magic add no excitement to the action.

The young actors playing the pilots {David Oyelowo, Nate Parker, Tristan Wilds and Elijah Kelly} and the acting veterans {Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard} feel like they're taking their roles forcefully instead of seriously. Both Gooding Jr. and Howard proved one thing in their respective roles: They were both in the film just for the money.

All in all, this fails both in entertainment and as a history lesson. For the past four decades, Lucas wowed audiences by showing them how movies can take people to brand new worlds with "Star Wars" and "Indy". Now, this time, he has failed. Both Lucas and the Tuskegee Airmen deserved better.

In the end, the best thing to come out of this is the thing before the film itself. The "thing" that I'm talking about is the trailer for the upcoming and hopefully very funny "Three Stooges" movie.

Rating: 1 star

When I saw the advertisements for this movie, I was afraid they might make a mockery of this important story by going too over the top (in the style of Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer.) After seeing George Lucas talk about the movie on the Daily Show, however, I definitely wanted to see it. I knew about the Tuskegee Airmen's heroic performance during World War II, and I was very happy to see the story being brought to the big screen by someone like Lucas - I felt that the film might have the budget to really shine.

The movie got off to a shaky start with some truly wooden dialog and dodgy acting which made me fear that the critics might have been correct in their panning of the film. There was, indeed, some very poor acting in the film, but after the first few minutes the primary cast were assembled and they were fortunately much better than some of the secondary actors (bomber pilots' dialog was totally unbelievable for example).

From the first combat scene things pick up and the film becomes rather engaging. There is a surprising level of tension throughout the film, balanced between the struggle between the red tails and the German military (in the air and on the ground), and sadly between the fighter group and their still painfully segregated military back home.

This movie's screenplay has its share of triumphant victory, terrible loss, and unexpected good news at times in the movie when it's very much needed. Anyone familiar with the story will know the historical record, and if that record is something you care about (and it should be), then I would urge you to go see it. I'm glad I did.

After ten minutes I began to tell myself... this can't be it. I continued watching... it was it. A bad joke, a nightmare, rubbish. You know the constant sensation and the feeling that something is really wrong... I don't have that often with films... but this one managed. How I managed not to break it off and leave it be is something I still can't explain.

From the first to the last dialog... nonsense, flat, cheese, even stupid, not funny at all, even when they searched fun. The characters... why bother to play? How it is possible, that good actors make such movies will always astonish me. The story... there are probably a lot of teenagers writing better stories. An accumulation of stereotypes. Blacks are cool, fun, indisciplined, all buds, unbreakable, superheroes. The white pilots are mean, racists. The Germans are just the incarnation of robotic evil... or something like that. Realism... no way! Nothing was believable... nor the actions, nor the acting...

Lamentably it is not a film to forget easily... horrid films seldom are... because you are constantly reminded how stupid you were to have made the mistakes of believing it was something to see and then actually watching it till the end.

Many folks have given this film terrible reviews based on the inaccurate representation of various technical issues; and they're absolutely right. And they've completely missed the point.

They get an A+ on their knowledge of aerial combat and its conduct in the skies of Europe, and an F- on their knowledge of the art, craft, and history of movie-making. George Lucas said plainly that he wanted to give the Tuskegee Airmen the full John Wayne, Hollywood hero movie treatment, and that's what he did to a T. I can only assume that many reviewers simply do not understand the genre AT ALL. It's a fable, a comic book; not a documentary, not a docku- drama, not anything else. If you understand and appreciate the old Hollywood formula for telling the hero's story, you will love this movie. If you don't like old school John Wayne hero movies, don't bother. It's that simple.

I'll be the first to admit that as a huge WWII history buff, I set my bar high as far as expectations. So needless to say, I had high expectations for this film. My first problem with this movie is that the producers assume everyone has seen 1995's "Tuskegee Airmen". Neither movie really explains how the program came to be, but this one drops the story right into the skies of Italy. I was pretty much done with the film in the first 5 minutes. The acting is terrible, FULL of cheesy one liners and wannabe inspiring moments. They try to pull you in by throwing big names at you. Cuba Gooding Jr for instance. Great actor but highly misused in this film, his character he's playing is too old, and doesn't have enough screen time. Terrance Howard is decent, but he's the one pumping the movie full of wanna be inspiring moments. Then there's Ne-Yo. I literally cringed when I saw he was in this movie, and my cringe was warranted with his first speaking scene. I'm STILL trying to figure out if he had some sort of mental disability. As far as the storyline....well there isn't a storyline. The movie kinda just goes from scene to scene with no real connection. It literally has a little bit of everything from romance to gritty war scenes. If you want to learn about the amazing story of the Tuskegee Airman, watch a documentary. Neither one of these movies do those pioneering pilots justice. The only good thing about the film is the cinematography.

This is a very unfortunate attempt to tell an important story and is a disservice to the men who lived these historic events. The character development is non-existent and portrays these men in a stereotypical light. The portrayal of the German pilots creates a comic book atmosphere, you can almost see the dialog bubble above their heads saying "Curses! Foiled again!" as they sneer at their adversaries. The flight sequences remind me of those from 1940s and 1950s films where the "planes" are plastic models on cables with the cameras panning the model to depict motion. The only flight sequences which are realistic are the landing and take-off scenes. I am extremely disappointed in this film and expected much more from Lucas.

If you like military history or the kind of fighter action seen in the Star Wars series, then Red Tails is the movie for you. But the dogfights are just half of what this film is about. I was pleasantly surprised with the stories that were told when planes and bullets weren't flying through the air.

Red Tails has a sizable ensemble cast of lead actors, who all do an admirable job with their parts. Several characters share the spotlight, and are given time to deal with their own personal stories and issues. They experience prejudice and adversity, but also romance and friendship. The interaction between the cast was terrific and nuanced. I really believed that this was a group of war buddies, who had their differences but nonetheless cared about each other.

Visually, the movie is excellent. Not just the CGI fighter planes, which won't even come across as CGI (blowing up real historical aircraft would've been out of the question). The scenery of the Italian cities and countryside is beautiful.

If I have one complaint, it's that the ending is a bit abrupt. I would've liked to see a "bigger" final battle, but as I understand it this movie didn't get a mega blockbuster budget. Also, though this movie is a fictional one merely "inspired" by true events, the true events still placed a limit on what the movie's heroes could do. They don't singlehandedly wipe out the Luftwaffe or win the war, and are restricted to escorting American bombers as the real Red Tails did.

But still, go see this movie. It's definitely worth it.

It IS difficult to review this film and NOT compare it with Tuskegee Airmen, but, without that comparison, I think this is a pretty decent film. The film is actually about the same group of airmen, facing the same odds and the same discrimination. But the approach to making this film is different and that's why it should be considered as a separate work. I have seen both films and I enjoyed each about the same as the other. It's good to see a subject from different perspectives sometimes. Occasionally, one film will actually help you understand the other. So I consider this film and Tuskegee Airmen to be complimentary to each other. The acting, direction, cinematography and editing are all very well done. I'd recommend watching both these films back-to-back or on successive evenings. You'll see what I mean.

Among the many problems I had with Red Tails, I suppose one of the most egregious was the incredibly overbearing and cloying musical score. But in a rather sad way, the score perfectly fits the entirely forced and artificial nature of the movie itself. Now, I know that typically a film's musical score is used to enhance emotion, but in the case of Red Tails, the music is so over-the-top, in-your-face, and cliché ridden that I couldn't help but laugh at times. One example is the music we hear when a soldier drives into an Italian town. Yes, we know we're in Italy, but in case anyone is confused we're treated to a musical cue that sounds like the spaghetti scene from Lady and the Tramp. And if you can't figure out that the German pilot is a bad guy, why, the music will certainly tell you! Well, that and the GIGANTIC SCAR ON HIS German FACE!

And I'm sure I'll be called a pinko/commie for saying this, but what was up with playing America the Beautiful during the credits? It felt so forced, like the music in one of those "patriotic" animatronic exhibits at Disneyland that gets mocked. And the reason those are mocked is because they are lifeless objects trying to manipulate and force us to feel something without actually LETTING us feel that way on our own. It's cynical trickery. And that's how I feel about the score of Red Tails and pretty much the movie in general.

The men of the 332nd were heroes and patriots. Real ones. But they were also real men, not the cartoon characters in Red Tails. And the Tuskegee Airmen deserve better than the childish fantasy of George Lucas by way of Anthony Hemingway.