Red Tails
[youtube=http://youtu.be/1yCEMkJ0YF8]
Tagline: Courage Has No Color
Based on a story by George Lucas, who financed the film, Red Tails is set during World War II and tells the story of the powers that be at the Pentagon gambling on some unorthodox options to try and win the day. And one such choice involves using the hitherto untried and untested African-American pilots of the experimental Tuskegee training program.
Lucas might have been captivated by the story but didn’t direct the movie, leaving it to Anthony Hemingway, whose evident talent was used to great effect on those seminal TV shows The Wire and Treme. But this is a step up and, sadly, it isn’t getting the same kind of raves as the aforementioned programs.
“In its falsity and clumsy exposition, Red Tails‘s dialogue has all the grace of a margarine commercial,” writes TIME’s Mary Pols. The New York Times is more positive, though still concludes that the ending “is as satisfying as a snack of milk and cookies after a ninth grade softball game.” Perhaps USA Today finds the best balance: “It’s only half of a good movie. As soon as those dogfighting planes land, the story trips up by skimming the surface of history.”
PHOTOS: A Brief History of World War II Movies
NewsFeed’s Flicks Pick: Both Haywire and Coriolanus have much to offer, but if you want to think at the same time as seeing heads being knocked together, then we have to go for Fiennes’s debut over Soderburgh’s latest.