On the heels of the big ball of cheese that is Red Tails, here's a re-issue of the previous, smaller ball of cheese The Tuskegee Airmen, an HBO movie from the mid-90s. If Red Tails is George Lucas's gung-ho John Wayne cowboy interpretation of the true story of World War II's only regiment of black fighter pilots, Tuskegee is the aw-shucks Disneyfied version. It's "factual" and "entertaining" in the way a movie shown during class by your history teacher might be. Which is to say it's neither factual nor entertaining, but might be pleasant to nap through.
Lawrence Fishburne stars as Hannibal Lee, an unfortunately-named negro from Iowa who wins a place at Tuskegee Airfield, where the army is experimenting on a regiment of college-educated black pilots. Among the other recruits are Cuba Gooding Jr. as the showboating "A Train" Roberts, Allen Payne as the perfectionist Walter Peoples, and Malcolm-Jamal Warner as lovable Theodore "Theo" Huxtable. The trainees have to deal with hard training as well as institutional racism, double standards and hard-nosed politicians waiting for them to fail. Also they have to deal with being given the dialogue of cartoon characters.
Eventually the airmen get deployed (with a little help from Mrs. Roosevelt) to North Africa, where they come under the command of Benjamin O. Davis (Andre Braugher, Law & Order), the real-life commander of the 99th and one of the first black Air Force commanders (later the first black Air Force general). Even in Africa they're segregated and treated as second-class pilots, and it isn't until they are relocated to Italy that the airmen begin to show their stuff as bomber escorts. Through their whole wartime career the 99th never lost a single bomber to enemy fighters, which is impressive considering the Germans were regularly shooting down one in three bombers at the time.
Which all goes to show that there really is a fantastic movie here. Unfortunately, this isn't quite it. The characters are too broad to be believable, the music is hammy and manipulative, all the locations seem to be Arkansas (Arkansafrica, Arkansitaly, Arkansermany). The movie does take an interesting short cut in aerial combat: whenever guns start firing the movie switches to actual WW2 gun cam footage. It's is off-putting the first time (Did they just run out of money?) but kind of grows on you after a while. Of course the gun cam doesn't always match the story, and at one point they supposedly sink a Japanese destroyer in the Mediterranean.
So The Tuskegee Airmen isn't a great film, but it's a good introduction to the history of America's first black fighter pilots, a history which is much more fascinating and complex than this movie (or Red Tails) would have us believe.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
The Tuskegee Airmen includes a full-color 32-page booklet as part of the packaging, a gorgeous mix of archival photos from the real airmen and behind-the-scenes shots from the film.
"The Tuskegee Airmen" is on sale January 17, 2012 and is rated PG13. Action, War. Directed by Robert Parrish, Robert Markowitz. Written by Paris Qualles, Trey Ellis, Ron Hutchinson, Robert Williams, T. S. Cook. Starring Allen Payne, Andre Braugher, Cuba Gooding Jr, John Lithgow, Lawrence Fishburne, Malcolm Jamal Warner.
