Trailer Talk: Red Tails
By Sweet Sugar
Man, I really hope this movie doesn’t suck.
The website and trailers say the movie was “inspired” by true events, which is scary to veterans who hold the Tuskegee Airmen in incredibly high self-esteem. I hope it doesn’t do to the Tuskegee Airmen what Michael Bay did to the Navy and the Doolittle Raid in Pearl Harbor.
The Tuskegee Airmen are some of the greatest men ever to set foot on this earth, and there’s no need to fictionalize any part of their story for the sake of an action movie. This story deserves a production on the level of Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers.
However, I agree that a big studio movie is long overdue. There was the Golden Globe-nominated PBS video “The Tuskegee Airmen”in 1995 starring Lawrence Fishburne that did an admirable job trying to correctly capture the historical context and obstacles they overcame.
The Red Tails trailer did give me chills, the aerial action sequences look great thanks to LucasFilm, and the casting looks solid. We could have gone without Cuba Gooding Jr. I think the studio snuck Cuba in there to try and atone for the stinker Men of Honor (2000) with Robert De Niro, which nobody watched. And the scenes with the racist Army general look painfully formulaic.
Overall, hopefully it will get people to learn more about American history. I can’t wait to see the RottenTomatoes.com results.
If you watch the movie and want to learn more about African American contributions in WWII, check out the massive logistical effort known as the Red Ball Express.
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