Historical film a snoozefest

Written by Curtis J. Phillips
Thursday, 26 January 2012 13:32

George Lucas may you please stick to what you do best: Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

The last time Lucas, in the role of executive producer, had a silver screen bomb like his current showing of Red Tails, was way back in 1986 with Howard the Duck.

Let’s forget about his Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) as it was basically a 98-minute cartoon commercial to sell toys.

With Red Tails, director Anthony Hemingway, in his first feature film, could have had a winner with the true story of the Tuskegee Airmen, brave African American pilots of the Second World War.

Instead we find a movie full of stale characters, terrible dialogue, stereotypical casting, wooden acting and clichés that make you sneer with disgust.

This is a far cry from the 1995 HBO TV-movie The Tuskegee Airmen which starred Laurence Fishburne and Cuba Gooding Jr., just prior to his Jerry Maguire days.

Gooding Jr. is also in Red Tails, so you would think that he might have lent a hand or made suggestions when he saw the movie was making a nose dive. But maybe in the end it was just Show Me the Money.

Poor Terrence Howard as Col. A.J. Bullard looked like he was auditioning for a role on The Walking Dead—that of a zombie.

What was with the patriotic music throughout? Talk about overkill.

The portrayal of the German flying ace, scar along his face and all, was cartoonish as were some of the half-baked combat scenes.

Some of the scenes, though, would have made director Howard Hughes of Hell’s Angels movie-fame happy though.

My better half called the movie, “a sanitized made-for-TV war movie,” as the credits rolled while I feigned I was asleep in the chair at Landmark Cinema.

“He is not asleep,” she said to our movie companions. “If he was asleep he would be snoring.”

Overall what should have and could have been a great historical look back at the Second World War and the pride, skills and tribulations of African American pilots, turned out to be a fly-by-night flick.

On the scale of one to five on the ZZZZZZ scale we give this a two.

See you on the silver screen.