20-Year-Old Black Guy’s Review of Red Tails

Peace. I just came back from watching the 23-year-in-the-making, George Lucas-produced-and-directed film Red Tails, about the Tuskegee Airmen from World War II. The film, which mostly takes place in 1944 Italy, is about the pilots and ground crew of the 332nd Fighter Group.

I first heard about the film a couple of weeks back, and looked forward to its release as it is one of the first all-black action pictures ever made, according to George Lucas. A commercially-released film with an all-black cast isn’t one that we typically see in today’s American film culture (aside from Tyler Perry’s lesser-distributed creations).

It is a shame that George Lucas has to remind his audiences that this film is based on actual events and an actual Negro team of fighter pilots (as they then preferred to be called). Not only that, but this film is as part of 20th-century American history as any other WWII story. Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan & Pearl Harbor all revolve around the same war that these Tuskegee Airmen fought in … let’s just make sure that we make that clear. (Special thanks to Wikipedia for lifting that 24-hour SOPA & PIPA blackout, so I could look up those titles.) But as the kids say nowadays, “but you don’t hear me though.”