Movie Review – Red Tails (2012)
Movies that are based on true stories, or inspired by true events, normally make good movies and stories, especially when it involves warfare or survival.
But as we know, or how we should know, sometimes those movies based on true stories get distorted for one reason or another. Sometimes it occurs to make the lead characters more interesting. Sometimes it occurs to help push a message or political statement.
Sadly, such a thing occurs frequently in the 2012 World War 2 aviation movie, Red Tails.
Red Tails begins in the skies of Europe during World War 2.
We see a group of German Bf 109 fighters making a hit-and-run attack on a squadron of Allied B-17 Flying Fortress bombers. The bombers’ escort fighters suddenly peel off and chase the fighters, just as the Germans intended. One of the B-17 pilots expresses anger as the Allied fighters leave the bomber formation unprotected again, chasing glory instead of protecting the bombers.
Sure enough, the German Bf 109s return and wreck havoc on the unprotected bombers. A few B-17s are shot down. We see crew members get killed while bombers tumble from the skies in burning wreckage.
Gee, if only those white fighter pilots had stayed with the bombers and protected them instead of chasing glory and inflating their egos! It’s hard to imagine that the Allied forces won the won with such arrogant pilots. I hope some other pilots can step up to the plate and actually do their jobs correctly!
Red Tails (2012) – (c) Lucasfilm, Ltd.
Red Tails then cuts to a scene of four black pilots flying a patrol mission. These men from the Tuskegee training program are part of the racially segregated 332d Fighter Group. As we learn, these pilots (“Easy” (played by Nate Parker), “Lightning” (played by David Oyelowo), “Ray Gun” (played by Tristan Wilds), and “Joker” (played by Elijah Kelley)) are bored. Some of them struggle to see the point of their patrol missions as they’re intentionally kept well away from the front lines of the war.
Red Tails (2012) – (c) Lucasfilm, Ltd.
The close-knit group of pilots are on patrol when they stumble upon a German truck. The truck is destroyed when they spot a German train off in the distance. The pilots get a taste of danger when the train’s anti-aircraft guns are suddenly uncovered and the German troops fire back at the aircraft. While three of the pilots make strafing runs from the rear and take damage to their aircraft, Lightning is, “Taking the train from the front like you should have done.” He attacks and destroys the locomotive, causing the rest of the trains’ cars to crash and get destroyed. The resulting explosion causes serious damage and nearly knocks Lightning’s aircraft out of the sky.
Red Tails (2012) – (c) Lucasfilm, Ltd.
While flying back to base in southern Italy, Lightning makes a low pass over a small town and spies an Italian girl. She waves to his aircraft as he flies over her house. He later drives over to her house and begins dating the girl. It’s also after the recent mission where the pilots have a meeting and Major Emanuel Stance (played by Cuba Gooding, Jr.) and try to see the point of their “worthless” missions in old and dated aircraft. They’re flying old P-40 Warhawks (same aircraft you see in Pearl Harbor (2001) for you movie buffs) while other pilots get to fly the newer P-47 Thunderbolts and P-51 Mustangs.
Red Tails (2012) – (c) Lucasfilm, Ltd.
Colonel A.J. Bullard (played by Terrence Howard) is constantly under scrutiny by the U.S. Army, and he keeps defending his pilots and their attitudes. He and Major Stance fight and eventually get the 332d to take part in Operation Shingle, the Allied amphibious landings at Anzio, Italy. The 332d are to provide air cover and keep the German Luftwaffe from attacking the troops.
Red Tails (2012) – (c) Lucasfilm, Ltd.
Red Tails shows the battle in the cloudy skies as the black pilots tangle with the German Bf 109 fighters. The 332d in their outdated P-40s score a few kills against the Bf 109s. Later in the battle, Lightning dogfights with the German flight leader, a guy they call “Pretty Boy.” The German pilot pulls off a nearly impossible maneuver and gets on Lightning’s tail. Easy shoots and damages Pretty Boy’s aircraft. The men then follow Pretty Boy back to his airbase and conduct a raid, destroying much of the base with strafing runs.
Red Tails (2012) – (c) Lucasfilm, Ltd.
How the P-40s are able to carry so much ammunition and inflict incredible damage, I don’t know. I have to check the “easy aiming,” “unlimited ammunition” and “limited damage” (for my aircraft) to have similar results when I fly my air combat games on the computer. When watching the unrealistic aerial maneuvers and combat situations in Red Tails, it looks like those pilots are in “easy mode” as well. It doesn’t help when the superior Bf 109s being flown by at least one ace pilot are easily shot down by inferior P-40s and men with virtually no air combat experience.
Red Tails (2012) – (c) Lucasfilm, Ltd.
Following the 332d’s aerial combat success in Operation Shingle, Col. Bullard is able to get the unit bomber escort missions and an upgrade to the new P-51D Mustangs. In reality, the 332s transitioned into the P-47 Thunderbolt and then the B model of the P-51 before getting the P-51D Mustang, the aircraft that made the Tuskegee airmen so famous.
Red Tails (2012) – (c) Lucasfilm, Ltd.
That’s roughly the halfway point in Red Tails. The remainder of the movie involves the pilots conducting long-range escort missions protecting B-17 bombers from the German Luftwaffe. Col. Bullard orders his men to protect the bombers at all costs, unlike the previous escort pilots. The Tuskegee pilots fight valiantly and score more kills, but Ray Gun is shot down and taken prisoner. In a few scenes that so much want to be like The Great Escape (1963), Ray Gun and some of his fellow POWs escape the prison camps. By this point there has been so much fantasy in the movie that they may have well had Captain America rescuing him from the camp.
Red Tails (2012) – (c) Lucasfilm, Ltd.
Back at the base, the black pilots overcome racial issues as their dedication and ability to protect the bombers is recognized by the white pilots. This sets up the final mission in Red Tails where the pilots of the 332d are chosen to escort B-17s bombers in a major bombing mission over Berlin. Instead of having other fighters escort the bombers in different stages of the mission, Major Stance points out that with long-range fuel tanks, the P-51s of his unit will be able to escort the bombers all the way to Berlin and back. The long-range capability of the P-51D Mustang was one of the factors that helped save bomber pilots during the remainder of the war.
Red Tails (2012) – (c) Lucasfilm, Ltd.
The final mission in Red Tails involves a group of Me 262 jet fighters attacking the bombers and escort aircraft. In a very Hollywood fashion ignoring combat strategy and certain laws of physics, Pretty Boy and the rest of the German pilots behave as poorly as expected.
So is Red Tails any good?
Nope. Not by a long shot.
It’s very clear that Red Tails is a propaganda film designed to bring attention to the racism and racial segregation that was faced by black troops in the military. This is rubbed in our face in the very beginning and it lasts through the final moments in the movie. That’s exactly how you turn off an audience and make a poor movie in the process.
Yes, the racism and segregation were wrong. This isn’t the first movie to exploit those problems in the past. For GREAT movies bringing these issues to light check out examples such as Glory (1989) and Men of Honor (2000).
As a movie, Red Tails stinks in several areas.
For starters, the characters are very one-dimensional and nobody changes or evolves in the movie. The attitudes that the characters have in the beginning continues to the very end. There’s no training for the men, no transition to better aircraft and missions, and almost no progress of time.
The whole POW episode with Ray Gun was an incredibly poor three-minute version (and rip-off) of the Steve McQueen epic, The Great Escape (1963). That scene should have ended with Ray Gun parachuting to the ground and being captured by German troops. End of story.
Red Tails is incredibly biased towards the black pilots, acting like white pilots are horrible arrogant bastards and the black pilots are men in shining armor. Remember the scene in the beginning when the B-17 pilots were upset that the fighter escort chased the German fighter decoys? Well, it wasn’t exactly as common as you would like to believe.
What we saw the German pilots doing was a trick in a special battle formation. The goal was to have a few Bf 109s draw off the fighter escort while the heavily gunned and armored Fw 190s would then attack the unprotected bombers. The problem was that this was a very complicated maneuver that rarely worked with large groups of aircraft. Many times the German fighters were intercepted prior to attacking the Allied bombers. However, when the special battle formation did work, the results were devastating against the bombers. While we see this to an effect in the beginning of Red Tails, it’s not like it was a common event for bomber pilots. Bf 109s and Fw 190s were a major threat without them pulling off a special battle formation.
So right away we know that the movie is heavily biased. The rest of the combat scenes involving P-40s and Bf 109s also have a lot of fantasy. Remember that the Messerschmitt Bf 109 was the top fighter of the war and the Luftwaffe literally had over two thousand fighter “aces” over the course of the war. The Bf 109 was famous for making diving attacks and then climbing away to safety before attacking again. Most of the Allied aircraft in the European theater of war had a difficult time fighting the Bf 109, especially when the 109s pulled off their vertical-style attacks.
The final battle with the 332d flying P-51s against the Me 262 jet fighters was complete garbage. The 262s should have just made high-speed passes and destroyed the bombers with their 30mm cannons. The explosive shells in the cannon could destroy a fighter with a single shot, and a bomber in as little as four shots. They could have ignored the fighters and called it a successful day. The final scene with Pretty Boy in his 262 and Lightning in his P-51 was complete crap. Explosive shells from the Me 262′s autocannon should have caused significantly more damage. There’s a good reason why so few of the Me 262s were lost in combat versus being destroyed on the ground or during take-off or landing operations.
It’s bad enough that Red Tails is a propaganda film released in February (Black History Month) and blatantly designed to show the black pilots in the best possible manner, but the horrible aerial combat scenes did it for me. As an air combat enthusiast, that was the final straw. It’s one thing to try to push a social issue, it’s another to get the aerial combat so wrong in the process.
Sadly, Lucasfilm could have made a perfectly good (and more accurate) film about the Tuskegee airmen without making racism the driving issue. But they didn’t. The company took the social justice route and Red Tails is nothing more than a propaganda film with historically inaccurate combat scenes. And it’s a poor movie on top of that.
Was there anything good in Red Tails?
Yes. The aircraft looked spectacular. I’d love to see more accurate movies in the future using aircraft that look as great as the ones in Red Tails.
Red Tails (2012) – movie trailer
Ironically, Terrence Howard played a Tuskegee pilot in Hart’s War (2002), and Cuba Gooding, Jr. also played one in The Tuskegee Airmen (1995). Here in Red Tails they stay out of the cockpits and play the roles of the commanding officers.
Irony part two – The two actors on the movie poster (Cuba & Terrence) have the least amount of screen time in the movie. The actors playing Easy and Lightning star in this movie while the bigger names stay in the background.
Colonel A.J. Bullard – “We have the right to fight for our country. The same as every other American.”