After much anticipation and scrutiny, especially among African-Americans, the new movie, Red Tails, was released Jan. 20.
It surpassed the projected ticket sales, raking in $19 million in its opening weekend.
“Red Tails” provides an account of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first all-black World War II fighter pilot squad.
The squadron, sent to North Africa and Italy to escort white bomber pilots, consisted of some of the best fighter pilots in the Air Corps. Their roles in the war have gone unrecognized for some time.
Executive producer George Lucas and director Anthony Hemingway presented a star-studded cast, including Academy Award winner Cuba Gooding Jr., Oscar nominee Terrence Howard, David Oyelowo and recording artist Ne-Yo.
The film opens with the words, “Blacks are mentally inferior to the white man, by nature, subservient, cowardly and therefore unfit for combat,” an actual quote by the 1925 Army War College.
I wouldn’t say that the movie is action packed, but there are some intense moments.
The aerial scenes are exhilarating. The intense situations that daredevil character “Lightning” [Oyelowo] puts himself in gives viewers moments of breath holding and rejoicing, from his frontal attack on a Nazi train to his final dogfight with a Nazi jet.
The line that probably drew the loudest laugh from the audience is when Ne-Yo said, “When y’all get mad, you turn red. When y’all turn envious, you turn green. When y’all turn cowardly, you turn yella. And you got nerve to call us ‘colored’.
Corny-cliché one-liners were abundant, and they were interjected in what otherwise would have been great scenes. In a fighting scene, a line like, “Let’s give those newspapers something to write about!” take away from the intensity of the scene.
What is undeniable is that the Tuskegee Airmen who provided inspiration for the movie did a great service for the United States in World War II.
Overall, the movie did a great job. I give this film a B+.