Redtails

directed by  Anthony Hemingway (2012)

George Lucas does Star Wars X-Wing dogfights in the original old school style going to the origin story of it all with the WWII Flying Aces or whatever the pilot dudes were called BITD.  It's about a company of black pilots, the Tuskagee Airmen, at least that's the angle for the making of this particular flick, so there's racism and patriotism and all that other WWII propaganda hoohaa brouhaha going on in this.

I caught the last half of it, got to see the dogfights and that was fine with me.  I missed most of the bonding and training, all the establishing of the stereotyped characters, the hero and the reckless rebel, the stoic Sargent, and all the baby faced boys toughening into REAL MEN TM.  I also missed most of the overcoming the honky ofay opposition to an all black pilot battalion.  I bet it was tedious, because the part I did see had enough corny dialogue to carry me through a few shitty movies.  It does have Terrence Howard going for it though. I saw him once in real life and he's so pretty I wouldn't have minded his character development scenes much at all.  There's a whole bunch of pretty men in this actually, but I only recognised a couple.  Cuba Gooding Jr.'s character with his jaunty cocked cap, reminded me of Hogan, from Hogan's Heroes.  Andre Royo, Bubbles from the Wire plays a mechanic and there were some white people I recognised too, like Byran Cranston from Breaking Bad.

It's a pretty crappy flick, about par for a propaganda war glamourising production in its plot, but it's got really shitty dialogue and the pacing is off. About the best thing going for it, is it's set in the only good war, with NAZI Germany enemy combatants to ruthlessly blow up and destroy.  That, and the pretty mens and planes.  Plus it's a black story so the racism issues are important, it's just a shame it's not done very well.  There was another movie made in 1995 based on the same story, called The Tuskagee Airmen, but I haven't seen it.  It's on youtube though.  Lawrence Fishburne?  John Lithgow?  Even has Cuba Gooding Jr. again.  Looks better than this one Holmes.

There's one thing I don't get about war movies.  How can you make such a terrible thing into something noble?  I mean really, war means killing ACTUAL people, destroying fathers and brothers and mothers and daughters and babies! and that's not even considering all the material destruction, like homes and roads and shops and offices and bridges and schools, museums libraries factories etc etc.  All that doesn't even count, because the enemy is less than and smashing them is the job.   What they want? What their grievances are? None of that even matters, because they are the dehumanised other.  It's ridiculous.