Red Tails (2012) [Blu-ray]
Action | Adventure | Drama | History | War

Academy Award Winner Cuba Gooding Jr. and Academy Award Nominee Terrence Howard lead a powerful ensemble cast in this high-flying epic inspired by the real-life adventures of the first African-American combat unit to serve in World War II. Italy, 1944. As the war takes its toll on Allied forces in Europe, a squadron of black pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen are finally given the chance to prove themselves in the sky...even as they battle discrimination on the ground. Featuring jaw-dropping aerial action and thrilling special effects, Red Tails is a breathtaking tribute to the unsung heroes who rose above extraordinary challenges and ultimately soared into history.

User Comment: Lyle F. Padilla from Turnersville, New Jersey USA, 1 February 2012 • 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.

Summary: George Lucas doesn't know anything about aerial warfare!

User Comment: *** This review may contain spoilers *** skull-21 from United States, 22 January 2012 • The Tuskegee Airmen deserved better than this tripe! Their story is a marvelous one but Lucas has ham fisted it into a caricature. I am extremely disappointed by this film. I hope someday Hollywood will finally realize that truth is often...... more entertaining than fiction, particularly when it comes to aviation and history.

These men were HIGHLY educated, technically astute, and physically fit. The USAAC/USAAF was doing everything in its power to disqualify black applicants for flying assignments by setting standards for them that were ridiculously high. The plan backfired, resulting in a Fighter Group composed of truly exceptional men. Yet NONE of this is conveyed in "Red Tails". We have an insubordinate hot shot, an alcoholic, a guy who likes to eat his pipe, and a mush mouth who just tells jokes.

It would have been nice to see a Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, or Clint Eastwood treatment on the topic. Maybe an interview with fighter ace Lee Archer and a few other Red Tails, then a flashback to the TRUE story, not this one dimensional nonsense.

A waste of some talented actors (and, my God, Terrence Howard was horrendous in this film) and special effects work (although some of the aerial choreography completely defied the laws of physics). The dialogue, particularly during the combat scenes is some of the worst I've ever heard. Also, the German "villain" is nothing like the Luftwaffe fighter pilots of World War II. These men were, as a whole, chivalrous and honorable, not to mention highly skilled and served for love of country, not for the fanatics who ran their government. The enemy in this film seems more like the Nazi/Hydra bad guy from "Captain America: The First Avenger" or something. Gag.

The acting is wooden, the writing atrocious, and the scenes disjointed. There is simply no cogent, coherent narrative here. It is basically a film about dogfights with shallow "drama" piecing them together. This film could have been so much better, but alas, George Lucas can't see the forest for the trees and squanders an opportunity to make a truly moving, memorable film that honors these men the way they should be honored.

Final analysis: This movie needs a lot more "Twelve O'Clock High" (a classic starring Gregory Peck, written by men who actually flew B-17s over Germany in combat) and a *lot* *less* "Pearl Harbor".

Summary: This Movie SUCKS!!!!!!

User Comment: Don Wilson from United States, 23 January 2012 • 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.

Summary: Not even worth a rental.

As the reviewer at Blu-ray.com said in his recomendation:
I've been obsessed with the Tuskegee Airmen ever since I was a kid building balsa-wood model airplanes in his bedroom, so I really wanted to like Red Tails. Unfortunately, the film stalls and plummets, weighed down by some of the same narrative mistakes that have wrecked other George Lucas productions--stilted dialogue, one-note characters, and artificially forced emotion. Still, I managed to set aside my critical faculties for a bit and at least enjoy some of the movie's kickass dogfights. If you're looking for a weighty, complicated war film you're going to be disappointed, but those after simple guns a'blazing aerial action might be passably entertained. Red Tails certainly brings the eye and ear candy on Blu-ray, with a gorgeous high definition picture and truly immersive sound. The best thing about this release, though? The hour-long documentary about the real Tuskegee Airmen included in the bonus features, which is better than the film itself by far and possibly worth the price of the disc alone.


[CSW] -2.8- Lots of good action, great special effects, but the dialogue was terrible. They just didn't sound like college educated men. Some of the lines sounded as if a child had written them and many scenes were worse than corny. The acting was horrible and the director didn't do much better. The Dog Fight scenes were o.k. but not great primarily because of the dialogue between the pilots, again they just didn't sound like college educated men. If you ignore the dialogue the action and special effects were great. My uncle was a Tuskegee Airmen that was shot down and died flying fighter escort and nobody in my family talked the way these men did. The real Tuskegee Airmen deserved to be honored better than this. But I still gave the movie a passing grade because there was an attempt to tell their story and that in and of it self is important. For those who do watch this film, fast forward to the battles scenes and then enjoy the action while ignoring the dialogue.
[V4.5-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box motion codes were available at the time of this rental although they are available now.

º º