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‘Red Tails’ tends to stall when it is in the air

Movie Review

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

January 20, 2012|By Wesley Morris

David Oyelowo is Joe Lightning Little in the World War II movie Red Tails. (20TH CENTURY FOX )

If George Lucas is to be believed (and there’s no reason he shouldn’t be), “Red Tails’’ is a movie no Hollywood studio wants us to see. Lucas complains to Bryan Curtis in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine that an action movie about the storied Tuskegee Airmen - black pilots who flew and fought with distinction in World War II - just wasn’t important to executives. He held a screening and none came. So he says he wound up paying for the entire movie himself. This is depressing news for several reasons.

First, if George Lucas can’t persuade a film studio to humor him and take a look at a movie, then who can? Second, the Times story then lists the raves from the black luminaries who attended a private screening. One former Airman implored every African-American to see “Red Tails,’’ and Al Sharpton offered a qualified assessment when he exclaimed, “It’s probably one of the best movies I’ve ever seen!’’

All of which brings me to the other depressing thing about this film, which opens today, years after other people’s attempts to get an Airmen story told. It puts audiences, once again, in the annoying position of having to run out and support something that isn’t very good. So you root for “Red Tails,’’ which Anthony Hemingway directed, because it wants to do right by history and the stories of these men. You do not root for it because it does anything with those stories that’s new or powerful or deep or even reliably entertaining. The screenplay is credited to John Ridley and the cartoonist Aaron McGruder, and it plunks us down in Italy on the all-black air base of the 332d Fighter Group, where the men are a handsome, close-knit assortment of cardboard types, played by a likable young cast.

Nate Parker is the upright mission leader. David Oyelowo is the hothead and ladies’ man. Tristan Wilds is The Kid. And several other actors share the job of comic relief. Marcus T. Paulk might not even be going for comedy, but his sole quirk is a ratty picture of a Black Jesus that he constantly prays to by name, and it always gets a laugh. So does whatever cornpone accent the singer Ne-Yo is going for. They’re all on the ground just long enough for Oyelowo’s hothead, Joe “Lightning’’ Little, to take over the movie. He has a bar fight, falls in love with an Italian woman (Daniela Ruah), and bickers with Parker’s character, Marty “Easy’’ Julian. Easy wants Lightning to calm down and listen to his commands in the air. Lightning wants Marty to stop drinking while aviating. Some of these scenes are sweet. Many of them play like outtakes from Robert Townsend’s piquant movie-racism satire “Hollywood Shuffle.’’ (“The sky is blue,’’ Wilds’s character says, “and my guns are hot!’’)