Red Tails (12A)
HHH
Dir: Anthony Hemingway
With: Terrence Howard, Cuba Gooding Jr, David Oyelowo
Running time: 124 minutes
LIKE a model aeroplane, this tale of African-American pilots who defied prejudice and sub-par equipment to fight in the Second World War looks the very dab when it is on the ground. Terrific story of derring-do, a starry cast, Terrence Howard and Britain's David Oyelowo among them, a thrilling adventure ahead.
It is only on closer inspection, when the craft attempts to fly like a modern motion picture, that creaks and cracks become apparent.
The Red Tails fighter group took their name from the Red Baron-style paint job applied to their aircraft. Like the rest of the airmen trained in Tuskegee, Alabama, they served in a segregated unit. Deemed good enough by the military authorities to die for their country, they were not deemed good enough to do so alongside white pilots. Discriminated against at home, discriminated against while fighting a war, the airmen could have been forgiven for wondering why they were risking all.
Yet as Anthony Hemingway's picture aims to make clear, the Tuskegee airmen were a band of brothers whose courage was worth shouting about. They made such a success of their service that later in the war a propaganda film was made about them, narrated by one Ronald Reagan.
Hemingway might be said to be starting off at a disadvantage in that the story is so good it has been told many times before in books, made-for-television movies (chief among them HBO's 1995 film, The Tuskegee Airmen), and documentaries. But it is a tale of heroism that doesn't age, and is worth telling again, particularly to a 12A audience. Question is: has Hemingway told it in a way that will appeal to this crowd?
He throws us into the thick of the action by beginning in Italy, 1944. The Red Tails have duff planes and mundane missions. Kept away from battles, their kill record is poor and Washington DC is threatening the unit with disbandment.
The unit's colonel, played by Terrence Howard, is having none of it. He demands and wins a fighting chance in the way of better planes and real missions. Now it is up to his men, led by Major Stance (Cuba Gooding Jr) to do the rest.
Among Stance's flying aces, two stand out: "Easy", the leader, played by Nate Parker, and Joe "Lightning" Little, the brilliant renegade, played by David Oyelowo. As characters they are strictly predictable. One is a pessimist, the other an optimist, one plays things strictly by the rules, the other never met a rule he didn't want to break, and so on.
That's the trouble overall with Red Tails. While a thrilling story of daring, it plays things astonishingly safe. Discrimination against the Tuskegee airmen occurs, and vile words are duly spoken, but it is all done in a certificate 12A fashion, when one suspects that, in reality, the racism was more certificate 18.
But Hemingway has chosen to make an adventure story rather than a political drama and signals his intentions from the off with blood red, comic book-style opening titles. This is to be a full blown, Boys' Own yarn complete with thrills and spills and dogfights.
Fair enough, but Hemingway goes one further in making his Forties story in a dated, Forties style, complete with wooden dialogue, two-dimensional characters, stiff-upper-lip acting and lashings of pilot movie clichés. Yes, that really is a pipe clenched between Cuba Gooding Jr's teeth. Acting-wise, Terrence Howard narrows his eyes a lot and stares into the middle distance by way of expressing consternation. The tone doesn't always suit the territory, as in the scene where airmen whoop with joy as bombs drop on civilian areas.
If that's not enough to chew on, Red Tails, executive-produced by George "Star Wars" Lucas, crowbars in a soapy romantic subplot involving a beautiful signorina with quite astonishing eyesight (we know this because when she first makes eye contact with her soon-to- be paramour she is on a rooftop and he is flying past on a plane. With vision that sharp she should have been a sniper).
The score, meanwhile, is so over the top and intrusive it practically sits in the seat beside you, bellowing into your ear. From soaring violins to what sounded like Miami Vice incidental music, it's relentlessly annoying.
Hemingway is a distinguished graduate from TV, where his work includes The Wire and Treme, so it's surprising he didn't pull a few surprises in his feature film debut. He relies first and last on the story. The strength of that, together with thrilling sequences of aerial warfare, pulls his film through. The money has gone on the aerial battles, and even though they too are shot through with clichés – dastardly blonde Germans vowing revenge, etc – it's easy to follow what is going on.
All in, not so much a wartime Top Gun as a fair to average actioner.
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