Red Tails

Red Tails details the true-life exploits of several black soldiers during the Second World War, as the so-called Tuskegee Airmen are forced to overcome racism and other obstacles to prove their worth among their white colleagues. Filmmaker Anthony Hemingway has infused Red Tails with an unabashedly old-fashioned feel that’s reflected in the film’s myriad of attributes, with the movie’s decidedly melodramatic narrative heightened by the presence of characters that, more often than not, feel more like types than three-dimensional figures (ie the cast includes, among others, an excitable newcomer, a cocky womanizer, and a pragmatic leader). The episodic nature of John Ridley and Aaron McGruder’s screenplay ensures that Red Tails possesses a stop-and-start sort of feel, with the inclusion of hopelessly familiar interludes (eg the protagonists are thrown out of a whites-only bar) wreaking havoc on the movie’s tenuous momentum and preventing the viewer from working up any real interest in or enthusiasm for the heroes’ ongoing exploits. And although the storyline has admittedly been peppered with a small handful of compelling sequences (eg one of the airmen attempts to safely bring in an injured colleague), Red Tails‘ problems are magnified by an overlong running time that’s never more evident than in its second half – as the movie reaches its peak with a pivotal mission about halfway through and subsequently keeps going long past one’s ability to care. (It doesn’t help, either, that Hemingway prolongs the proceedings by emphasizing a series of needless, uninteresting subplots, including one character’s romance with an Italian native and another’s efforts at escaping from a POW camp.) The end result is a well-intentioned piece of work that’s simply never able to pack the visceral or emotional punch that’s surely been intended, which is a shame, certainly, given that there is unquestionably a lot here worth liking and admiring (including battle sequences that are undeniably quite impressive in their execution).

** out of ****