6.1 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
A crew of African American pilots in the Tuskegee training program, having faced segregation while kept mostly on the ground during World War II, are called into duty under the guidance of Col. A.J. Bullard.
Starring: Cuba Gooding Jr., Terrence Howard, Nate Parker, David Oyelowo, Tristan Mack WildsAction | 100% |
Adventure | 48% |
War | 36% |
History | 31% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
French (Canada): Dolby Digital 5.1
English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 5.0 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
As an aviation history nerd, I always geek out at the possibilities of another big-budget dogfighting film. But since I've been burned recently— Flyboys, I'm looking at you—I approached Red Tails with cautious expectations. Now, I had no doubts that executive producer George Lucas—who worked on this project for 20-odd years before getting it off the ground, so to speak—could impressively recreate WWII-era air battles. I wasn't worried about that in the slightest. After all, this is the guy who has long-claimed the 1927 film Wings as the inspiration for the interstellar dogfighting in Star Wars. He knows his stuff when it comes to aerial combat. What he has trouble with is what we might call the human element of his films. The dialogue. The storytelling. The tone. My main concern was that Red Tails would adopt the campy 1930s-serials quality of the Star Wars prequels, with cardboard characters, almost comically evil villains, and cornball, Hallmark-card sentimentality. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened. Although the film was directed by Anthony Hemingway and written by John Ridley and Aaron McGruder, you get the immediate sense that it was Lucas who held all the creative control. Red Tails suffers from the kind of willfully outdated nostalgia that's now his signature style, a naive retreat to simpler times that were never really as simple as Lucas imagines.
Tuskegee Airmen
As you'd expect from a top-tier, Lucas-approved release, Red Tails looks fantastic on Blu-ray, with a 1080p/AVC-encoded digital-to-digital transfer framed in a 2:40:1 aspect ratio. The film was shot with Sony's CineAlta F35 high definition cameras, and the resulting image has a crisp, vibrant, nearly noiseless look that—for better or worse—sets Red Tails apart from the grungier, desaturated aesthetic of most recent war movies. You almost get the sense that Lucas and Co. were going for the digital equivalent of a big budget mid-century Technicolor quality. (Though, I don't really get the very 1980s-ish opening titles.) The level of clarity throughout is almost always excellent, with fine textures easily visible in tell-tale areas like the airmen's faces and leather flight jackets, and while the CGI is sometimes a bit obvious, the digitally created planes and aerodrome environments are also exceptionally detailed. Color is bright and vivid—reds, especially—and highlights have a soft, creamy cast that gives the otherwise obviously digital image a slightly antiqued appearance. Source noise is rarely visible from a distance, and I didn't notice any overt banding, blocking, artifacts, or other compression/encode issues. A gorgeous Blu-ray experience, all around.
No surprise here, either. We're talking LucasFilms and THX, so you know the audio's going to rock you like the proverbial hurricane. If you're an
audiophile, you already know that the film was the first to theatrically feature Barco's Auro-3D 11.1 sound format, which is capable of creating the aural
illusion of depth and height. While the full experience sadly can't be ported over to Blu-ray, Red Tails features a lossless DTS-HD Master
Audio 5.1 surround track that delivers all the sonic action—and more—that you'd expect from a WWII dogfighting film, with pinpoint directionality and
some of the most seamlessly convincing cross-channel movements I've heard in a while. Engaging doesn't quite cut it as a descriptor. Turn this
track up loud and you'll want to physically dodge the bullets you'll think are coming at you from all sides. P-51s tear through the soundfield, to and from
(almost) every conceivable direction. Engines roar and propellers beat the air. Explosions rock with subwoofer-assisted oomph. During the big aerial
firefights there's just so much going on audio-wise, with the mix frequently tracking the movements and positions of multiple planes as they flip
and roll and fire at each other. Even in the quieter scenes, the track features plenty of subtle environmental ambience, from quiet crickets outside to
barroom chatter in the whites-only officer's club. The film's score was composed by influential jazz trumpeter Terrence Blanchard, who mixes in
drumline/marching band elements with a huge orchestra, and the music, if a bit too emotionally obvious at times, sounds fantastic—big and full and
textured. There were a few moments when I thought the dialogue might've been a bit too low in the mix, but never to the extent that I'd
consider docking the score. If this mix doesn't deserve full marks, I'm not sure what does.
The disc includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles, along with an English Dolby Digital Surround mix, a 5.1 descriptive audio track, and
Spanish and Québécois French Dolby Digital 5.1 dubs.
I've been obsessed with the Tuskegee Airmen ever since I was a kid building balsa-wood model airplanes in his bedroom, so I really wanted to like Red Tails. Unfortunately, the film stalls and plummets, weighed down by some of the same narrative mistakes that have wrecked other George Lucas productions--stilted dialogue, one-note characters, and artificially forced emotion. Still, I managed to set aside my critical faculties for a bit and at least enjoy some of the movie's kickass dogfights. If you're looking for a weighty, complicated war film you're going to be disappointed, but those after simple guns a'blazing aerial action might be passably entertained. Red Tails certainly brings the eye and ear candy on Blu-ray, with a gorgeous high definition picture and truly immersive sound. The best thing about this release, though? The hour-long documentary about the real Tuskegee Airmen included in the bonus features, which is better than the film itself by far and possibly worth the price of the disc alone.
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Ultimate Edition
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Director's Cut
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2-Disc Special Edition
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