Red Tails

World World II was  a dark and fearful time for the United States. We were fighting a war on two fronts: Germany and Japan, and we were in need of the best of the best soldiers. Though we were craving the best of the best, we still limited our forces to white men only, leaving women to work in the factories, and the African-American soldiers were forced to serve behind the lines, and stuck doing the grunt work. However, the 332nd Fighter Group, as known as the Tuskegee Airmen, were the first African-American fighter pilots in US Army, and were allowed to pilot fighter planes. They were unique; painting the tails of their plane red, giving them the name " The Red Tails." More than half a century later, a full length movie is being made about their story.

The plot line is simple: the African-Americans trying to become important in the US Army. They basically fly around at first, missing all the good bits of action and trying to be heroes. They have the old planes that are out of date, though still flyable and have decent guns. The main crew consist of nine or ten African-American men who aspire for greatness. They go on missions, though none of them bring them any type of greatness,when they get a great mission to accompany the white pilots on a dangerous mission over Berlin.

Now, the plot sounds decent right? It sounds like that it would be a good movie, and the best part: it has some truth behind it, right? Wrong. The movie was bland in my mind, the best part being the explosions. The story barely moves at all, besides the fact that thtey get new and better fighter jets, but other than that, the story moves at 5 Centimeters per Second. Also, the side of the love story is almost unneeded, though it give some characters more depth, not much though.

The acting in this movie is where I will tear this movie apart. It was horrible! The African-American actors were awkward and stiff at best. The white fighter pilots' acting horrible due the fact that it was bland as heck. The lines were also generic, and the execution of said lines was horrible. Also, writing of all the lines was horrible.

Honestly, I wish they had shown more, such as the basic training of the soldiers and perhaps more of the racial tension between the white men and the African-Americans; there was almost none, except two scenes, and that's it. At this time, as you may know, the racial tension in the military was heavy as hell, and the white men shouldn't have been so accepting as there were in the movie, because we all know that they encountered problems with integration in services. The white men were not all hunky-dory with the African-Americans joining the unit in real life like they were in the movie.

There is one last think I would like to offer towards the movie: If you're going to subtitle the German in the movie, why not the Italian? Granted, the meaning behind the Italian was very easy to understand due to it being basic Italian, but still? Were they trying to show us what one of the American Characters had to go through in order to date the chick or what? And on the subject of the Italian, which brings up the Italian chick the pilot was trying to get: Why was the love story there? It added nothing to the plot and I honestly came to this movie wanting explosions and war and such, not some love story that felt like it took up half the time.

Overall, for what I was expecting, the movie was terrible. I was expecting something great, something epic, and I got some watered down version of history. Overall, I would not recommend this movie to anyone except perhaps kids who need to learn about a part of military history, and even then, no. It had some explosions, but not enough, and it had some romance, but too much. If you want to go see this, I'm not stopping you, but you will probably regret it.