George Lucas’ Film About The Tuskegee Airmen Mixes Slow Moments With Riveting Combat Scenes
I went to a movie theater instead of a bar.
This is highly unusual for me, as I’m a blogger of bars and not movies or theaters, but it was a rainy Monday at the beach and I was anxious to see this film about a once-neglected part of American history.
I saw Red Tails, the tale about airmen from the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of black fighter pilots in World War II. I am a bit of a WWII buff, so I know the story and subject matter quite well.
Based on the commercials, I was prepared for the combat action to be weak – they appeared to be all computer-generated – and the on-the-ground scenes to be excellent, knowing that George Lucas produced the film (and financed it with his own money). In reality, it was just the opposite.
The combat scenes were riveting, beginning with the first one of the Red Tails attacking a German train. The German gunners firing anti-aircraft shells at the planes made me very thankful I was seeing this in a movie theater instead of from the inside of a cockpit. It was an eye-opening, realistic look at combat from the seat of a fighter plane; hundreds of pilots lost their lives on such strafing missions to German ground fire.
The computer-generated action was most evident during major combat scenes when the Red Tails escorted B-17s on bombing raids with all the planes in big formations. Then again, it’s not easy to film a hundred B-17s, dozens of P-51s plus German ME-109s and 262s for real. This was quickly forgotten when the mostly excellent close-up action began to fill up the screen.
The sounds of bullets hitting metal put me in the back of my chair and made me say, “wow.” There is also a revealing scene of a German Prisoner of War camp. This was no Stalag 13 of Hogan’s Heroes, this was double-barbed wire fences and mean Germans with machine guns. It was another “glad I’m here and wasn’t there” moment, and that’s even with me knowing that those shot down in planes had it better than captured ground troops, for the Luftwaffe treated fellow airmen relatively good.
It was when the airmen were on the ground that things ground to a halt in Red Tails.
There was too much sitting around.
The story of the Tuskegee Airmen was about their performance in combat and there was simply not enough combat (perhaps a 30-70 ratio). This could have been made up for in some way by providing more of the strategy behind the building of the Tuskegee Airmen and their missions. Red Tails does have scenes about the struggle the squadron had against prejudiced white commanders in Washington, but nothing about how they got to be pilots in the first place.
If I already did not know of the contributions and significance of the airmen beforehand, I would have been asking myself: “What’s the point of this movie?”
The only thing that kept the movie moving – and me from yawning – in the non-combat times was nice scenes of the Italian coast (the airmen were stationed in Italy) and a romance that developed between the very likeable clown character, Lightening (David Oyelowo) and a beautiful local Italian girl (Daneila Ruah).
From a historical perspective, the movie’s main flaw is that it does not pay enough attention to the Tuskegee Airmen’s greatest accomplishment, and that was its escorting of bombers to German targets, some deep within Germany. With German fighters and thick anti-aircraft fire – the dreaded flak – it was a dangerous mission for everyone in a plane. Yet the Tuskegee Airmen were so good at it that bomber pilots began requesting that they be escorted by these “red tails.”
The movie contains only two fairly brief scenes of these bomber escort raids. This is where the Tuskegee Airmen built their reputation and it should have been the focal point of the movie. Instead, it seems more of an afterthought.
The tails of their fighters were red, by the way, because there were so many Allied fighters in the air by 1944 that commanders wanted some type of markings so bomber crews would not mistake them for the enemy and start shooting at them. Red was used because, one of the pilots said in a recent interview, “it was probably the only color of paint we had at the base.”
Overall, Red Tails proved to be time well spent, but it’s hardly an epic WWII movie like Saving Private Ryan (yes, that was a fictional story but it was based on real circumstances) or HBO’s excellent Band of Brothers mini-series about the 101st Airborne Division. Or, going back several years, The Longest Day, a true classic chronicling the Normandy Invasion.
By the way, the movie doesn’t say so but the pilots were called the Tuskegee Airmen because they were trained in Tuskegee, AL. That’s the location of a black college, Tuskegee Institute. If it sounds a bit familiar, it’s where the musical group The Commodores went to school and formed their band.
Now, a little about the movie theater. I went to the Arc Light Beach Cities Theater in El Segundo, CA. As I said in this intro, I spend a lot more time in bars than movie theaters. And this movie theater actually has a bar. But you can’t take your drinks to your seat. How silly!
I was also amused at how you have to choose a seat when using the credit card kiosk to purchase a ticket (matinee price, $12.50). This isn’t an airline, it’s a movie theater! As I was chuckling to myself about this once seated, someone actually came up and said I was in his seat. There were maybe 10 people in the theater and he wanted his designated seat!
By the way, I used to work in a movie theater. Just thought I would throw that in here now to demonstrate that I’m no stranger to the places and have some insight as to how things are run at those businesses.
We, too, had a bar in our theater. But only for us employees!
Michael / South Bay Foodies says
Thanks for your review and opinions on Red Tails! I have yet to see it but will report back when I do. My GF is already ahead of me in that step so it may be a while. LOL
As for the Arclight, yeah, I love the fact that you can have a sip or two before your show. But dog gone it, let me take my brew in with my popcorn! 😀 I guess when we really want to do that, we’ll have to break out of the South Bay and head up to the Gold Class Cinemas in Pasadena.