Average Rating: 5.3/10
Reviews Counted: 97
Fresh: 35 | Rotten: 62
Despite a worthy fact-based story and obvious good intentions, Red Tails suffers from one-dimensional characters, corny dialogue, and heaps of clichés.
Average Rating: 5.1/10
Critic Reviews: 29
Fresh: 7 | Rotten: 22
Despite a worthy fact-based story and obvious good intentions, Red Tails suffers from one-dimensional characters, corny dialogue, and heaps of clichés.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 20,538
1944. To help win the war, the Pentagon brass has no choice but to consider the untested African-American pilots of the experimental Tuskegee training program. Just as the young Tuskegee men are about to be shut down and shipped back home, they are given the ultimate chance to show their courage. These intrepid young airmen take to the skies to fight for their country - and the fate of the free world. -- (C) Official Site
Jan 20, 2012 Wide
$47.6M
20th Century Fox
All Critics (97) | Top Critics (29) | Fresh (35) | Rotten (62)
To its credit, the film gets at the things that gave the Airmen their lasting fame -- the odds and racism they overcame, leading to the integration of the armed forces, the civil rights movement and the integration of America.
This is so generic as storytelling that it fails even as a basic history lesson: it's hard to believe that the stock conflicts on-screen have any connection to real events.
One can get away with a lot of cornball speeches a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away but it doesn't work nearly as well a short time ago on planet Earth.
Red Tails is better than nothing - but "nothing" isn't the other option. That HBO film is still out there, and Red Tails doesn't add to it or improve upon it.
Instead of pride or anger or resolve, all it left me feeling was a little bit of regret that I hadn't been home, watching "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" instead.
Red Tails is a lousy film. Not wincingly bad, mind you, just mediocre.
The pilots are reduced to war-movie stereotypes, firing off character clichés ('best soldier I ever met'), historical lectures, or go-get-'em speeches with anachronisms ('Man up').
We owe [The Tuskegee Airmen] an enormous amount of gratitude for putting those ill-conceived ideas to rest while protecting our country...and we certainly owe them a better movie than Red Tails.
It's such an extraordinary true story and 'Red Tails' turns it into something extra ordinary (in other words, really really ordinary).
...a well-intentioned piece of work that's simply never able to pack the visceral or emotional punch that's surely been intended...
Director Anthony Hemingway seems stuck in television mode, unable to unfurl his dramatic banner into longer, bigger movie proportions.
The film carries important messages about camaraderie, persistence, fortitude and courage in the face of nearly impossible obstacles.
Somewhat clunky WWII drama with some top-notch aerial dogfighting sequences.
Inspiring, if insipid, skimming the surface as a trail-blazing tale about the courageous Tuskegee airmen.
If the film does nothing else than educate new generations about these incredible heroic men, then I say see it.
Because this is obviously a labor of love, it's a little easier to forgive it for falling short of the Real McCoy.
This is a solid action movie with a historically important story which is accurate, according to one of the original Tuskegee Airmen who saw this movie.
A canny homage to a certain genre of film, the aerial adventure story, a type that was popular when airplanes were considered marvelous machines and not merely flying buses.
a deliberate throwback to 1940s war movies, but not in a good way
Thankfully, much of Red Tails is spent in the skies, where fighter planes swoop and zoom in thrilling dogfights... George Lucas apparently gave up the key to his CGI kingdom, creating marvelously designed in-flight action and a sappy, snappy salute.
After a slow start the movie gets better and better as it goes along
Hemingway and his cast make us care about the team and its members.
It has the best of intentions, an excellent cast, and thrilling battle footage. But the scenes on the ground are clunky.
I expected so much more. In a recent interview with George Lucas, he claimed that the reason his production company (Lucasfilm) had to fully fund his new film project "Red Tails", was because the concept of putting out a film about the first African America military aviators in the United States Armed Forces (The
January 23, 2012Super Reviewer
George Lucas is the kind of guy who would have an issue getting a movie made. Lucas has been trying to get a movie about the Tuskegee Airmen made since the 1980s, but he says no studio would bite, concerned that American audiences would not be interested in a movie with an all-black cast. So Lucas just paid for the
January 22, 2012Super Reviewer
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