roarshock

It's a pity that a weak, ignorant, make-believe bit of film got attached to a band of real-life warriors. It's a pity that the true stories of how the Tuskegee Airmen and the 332nd Fighter Group fought and died for this country were so often distorted or ignored, and replaced by 2 hours of slack-jawed Hollywood stupidity. As if the reality wasn't important enough, interesting enough, or dramatic enough for a movie.

"Red Tails" does not honor the men of the 332nd. The movie constantly has it's pilots flying and fighting stupidly, irrationally, and sometimes impossibly, then awards them victories when in reality they would have been either shot down or grounded. The REAL Tuskegee Airmen EARNED their victories by being both smart and good! If the filmmakers had really wanted to preserve the their good memory they would have invented a fictitious group of black pilots for their movie instead of playing with the reputations of the real men who accomplished so much.

The only reason why I rated this film as high as a 6 and not lower is that other than the historical slurs it otherwise fits my definition of "sub-standard Hollywood schlock". It's a film that you can spend two hours laughing at, or simply staring at in stunned amazement by its seemingly endless sequences of the stupidly impossible, the stupidly improbable, and the stupidly pointless. A great film to keep you constantly amused by playing 'Spot What's Wrong Here'. A film that should only be seen for free, and even then only when you've nothing else better to do.

Hard to find in the US, my DVD was a gift from my sister -- a Slavic Languages professor -- who knows how to find such things. Faithful to the original novel, this probably isn't the best introduction to the series, as Holmes is absent through much of it while Watson investigates alone. With so little Holmes/Watson interaction, some of the appeal must certainly be missing.

That said, I very much like how Watson seriously, diligently, and intelligently carries out his investigation, not unlike numerous other successful fictional detectives. Except when tipsy, he is rarely the stereotypically foolish Watson. If I had never heard of Sherlock Holmes I might even have expected Watson himself to solve the mystery. However, because he is so serious it makes his character a bit too dry through much of film; though that in turn makes his actual flashes of foolishness and his reunion with Holmes more effective illustrations of Watson's true character.

What was interesting about the supporting characters is that they definitely seem to have more than a little Russian in them, from the humorously extroverted Sir Henry Baskerville to the arch-slavic-tragedian portrayal of Beryl Stapleton. I found it a bit jarring at first, expecting more British reserve in the characters, but eventually just let them be themselves and let myself be entertained. Much of Dartmoor also looks far more Russian than English, but that's only to be expected and easily overlooked.

Overall, this is a well done 'Hound', true to the story and true to the characters of Holmes and Watson. I got some hint of Vasili Livanov and Vitali Solomin's vast appeal, but not enough for me to become a wildly enthusiastic myself. At least, not yet. Because that hint is more than enough for me to nag my sister into getting me the rest of the Livanov/Solomin Holmes series. And then we'll see....

Unlike most movies which try to illustrate drug and hallucinogenic experiences by using a bunch of jarringly bizarre and heavily symbolic images randomly strung together, Chappaqua struck me as having a strange emotional continuity throughout -- that is, every odd new scene and image that appears somehow feels perfectly appropriate when it occurs. It's as if Rooks not only put together visions and sounds that evoked his actual emotions and experiences, but also managed to assemble them in the order they happened, one flowing seamlessly into the next even though there is no obvious connection between them. In fact, the film strikes me as being not so much hallucinogenic as dreamlike, another state rarely captured well on film. So this is definitely not a film for those who insist that movies should explain, clearly and completely, exactly what they're all about. But if you want a chance to ride on the meandering currents of another person's mind, then you might give this film a try.