Red Tails

Roger Moore / Dallas Morning News
Jan 23, 2012
To its credit, the film gets at the things that gave the Airmen their lasting fame -- the odds and racism they overcame, leading to the integration of the armed forces, the civil rights movement and the integration of America.

Ben Sachs / Chicago Reader
Jan 23, 2012
This is so generic as storytelling that it fails even as a basic history lesson: it's hard to believe that the stock conflicts on-screen have any connection to real events.

James Berardinelli / ReelViews
Jan 21, 2012
One can get away with a lot of cornball speeches a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away but it doesn't work nearly as well a short time ago on planet Earth.

Eric D. Snider / Film.com
Jan 21, 2012
Red Tails is better than nothing - but "nothing" isn't the other option. That HBO film is still out there, and Red Tails doesn't add to it or improve upon it.

Stephen Whitty / Newark Star-Ledger
Jan 20, 2012
Instead of pride or anger or resolve, all it left me feeling was a little bit of regret that I hadn't been home, watching "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" instead.

James Adams / Globe and Mail
Jan 20, 2012
Red Tails is a lousy film. Not wincingly bad, mind you, just mediocre.

Tom Long / Detroit News
Jan 20, 2012
The Tuskegee Airmen were serious heroes, on a number of levels. They deserve a serious movie. "Red Tails" is not that movie.

Mark Jenkins / Washington Post
Jan 20, 2012
The African American fliers' great achievement merits a great movie. "Red Tails" isn't it.

Lou Lumenick / New York Post
Jan 20, 2012
An inspiring, rousing tribute to the heroic, history-changing Tuskegee Airmen and World War II movies of the '40s, "Red Tails'' would probably be acclaimed as a minor masterpiece if it was directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Amy Biancolli / San Francisco Chronicle
Jan 19, 2012
The Tuskegee Airmen, the trailblazing African American pilots who fought off segregation and Nazis during World War II, merit a great film. "Red Tails" isn't it.

Claudia Puig / USA Today
Jan 19, 2012
It's only half of a good movie. As soon as those dogfighting planes land, the story trips up by skimming the surface of history.

Wesley Morris / Boston Globe
Jan 19, 2012
"Red Tails'' has its moments. They've just gone too far in the other direction. The movie is so desperate to be palatable, to appeal to everybody that it doesn't taste like anything.

Joe Morgenstern / Wall Street Journal
Jan 19, 2012
It's antiquated kitsch reprocessed by the producer's nostalgia for the movies of his boyhood.

Steven Rea / Philadelphia Inquirer
Jan 19, 2012
[It] sets out to honor these heroes, and does so - but in ways that reduce their achievements to the stuff of cartoons.

Rafer Guzman / Newsday
Jan 19, 2012
"Red Tails" has genuine admiration for the sacrifices and achievements made by the Tuskegee Airmen, but they deserve a better commemoration than this.

Mary F. Pols / TIME Magazine
Jan 19, 2012
A feature film that falls much closer to the goofy Hogan's Heroes in the spectrum of World War II-focused productions than Saving Private Ryan.

Randy Cordova / Arizona Republic
Jan 19, 2012
The film's sincerity and good intentions shine through the hokum.

Glenn Kenny / MSN Movies
Jan 19, 2012
More often than not, Red Tails feels like it's pandering to every focus group that it never even tested... It's so cautious as to be lifeless, which is a shame on a lot of levels.

Joe Neumaier / New York Daily News
Jan 19, 2012
While its cast is first-rate and its flying sequences sharp, the movie is as glazed and wide-eyed as a 70-year-old comic book.

Colin Covert / Minneapolis Star Tribune
Jan 19, 2012
It's derivative of other World War II movies and entirely mechanical in its appeal. Emphatically mainstream in style and substance, it honors those exceptional fliers but denies viewers a challenging portrait of our own history.

Red Tails Cast:

• Bryan Cranston
• Cuba Gooding Jr.
• David Oyelowo
• Nate Parker
• Terrence Howard