Red Tails is a very odd gung-ho war movie that
strives to emulate similar World War II combat films like Howard Hawks’ Air
Force (1944) and John Ford’s They Were Expendable (1945), only told
with latter-day state-of-the-art techniques and special effects. It doesn’t really work and it’s extremely
hard not to lay the blame at the doorstep of executive producer George Lucas,
whose influence looms large over the film even though he did not direct
it. It is a project that he’d been
talking about forever and supposedly intended to direct. Lucas directing a non-Star Wars film
at this point in his life could have been a crucial move in forcing a
reevaluation of his cinematic reputation, which has sunk lower than almost
anyone of his generation, and why he decided to hand off directing duties is a
mystery, unless he’s lost faith in himself as much as everyone else has. Nevertheless, the much younger Hemingway
attempts to create a Lucas-like vibe, even though he doesn’t share Lucas’
sensibility and therefore can only try to handle the various preposterous
clichés in the film as competently as possible.
Personally, I think that if Lucas was so impelled to make an aerial
combat film, he should’ve just done it – (and done it himself) – rather than
hiding behind another director and the Tuskegee Airmen story in an attempt to
make it seem like he’s really taking a bold stand against racism.
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