Movies are supposed to be entertainment. So I hate when prior to a movies release the buzz is about racial support for the movie. This seems to only happen in the African-American community. You know where a person is considered not BLACK if he or she doesn’t support a movie on opening weekend. No one really informs you that there are NO black studios, and although a movie may be made for a black audience the monies that are derived from its success rarely make it to the pockets of black people.
The budget for “Redtails” was 58M. That’s a sizable investment for a black history story, with a relatively all black cast. And when the movie didn’t test well, the propaganda machine was revved up to introduce racial black-male in an attempt to guilt black people into supporting the film.
There is a reason why the movie didn’t test well. It was an awful movie! George Lucas, who financed the film, got in on some of the racial sparring. Instead of helping the movie with his wallet, he should have donated his considerable movie making abilities. Don’t get me wrong this is an excellent story but all great stories don’t make great movies (see… “Tortuous and the Hair”, “Humpty Dumpty”. Etc.) These are fantastic stories that would never have a movie script written for them. Plus this same story was told in 1995 when the “Tuskegee Airmen” was made. “Airmen” was 100 times better than “Redtails.”
This movie was bad because;
There was no dynamic character. No character changed. There was no growth or expansion of any personality.
The acting was bad. No one convinced me they cared about their character. Who did the casting of this movie? Tuskegee Airmen had Laurence Fishburne, Andre Braugher, John Lithgow, Mekhi Phifer, Courtney B. Vance; this movie had Terrence Howard, Cuba Gooding Jr, and a bunch of nobodies.
It was a sausage fest. The only woman in the movie didn’t speak English.
Hollywood please start making movies that are entertaining. This movie could have been good if you cared more about entertaining us, and less about telling a story, and then extracting money for it from us.
