Red Tails - 3 stars out of 10

Red Tails - 3 stars out of 10

"Red Tails" is exactly what you expect from the previews - an interesting historical story paired with a script and acting do not do it justice, relying on its impressive dogfighting special effects to leave audiences satisfied.  The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African American pilots in the armed forces and deserve a tribute to their trials and successes, but their story is not told the right way.  The casting of Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard was smart and they earn their paychecks, but some of the supporting cast is just terrible.  Most of these pilots must have skipped the day that they taught "how to dub over an image of yourself on-screen" in acting school.  The vocal emotions never match their facial expressions, particularly the white pilots whose vocal inflections resemble Norm, the robot from Phineas and Ferb.  As if the acting isn't distracting enough, the script loses its identity with an unnecessary love story that begins to dominate the film and takes away from the tribute that we're trying to pay to these airmen.  I don't know if they wrote this overdramatic tangent into the script to create empathy for an otherwise annoying character or maybe just to lengthen the film, but it fails by completely taking away from the focus.  In spite of this script's self-sabotage, you can't help but get choked up at the end but be advised: If you are watching this film for its story, don't bother.  If you are watching this film for cool special effects and one of the most realistic portrayals of dogfighting that you can find, you might consider fast-forwarding or ignoring all of the acting between the action sequences.