Red Tails
Twentieth Century Fox | Release Date: January 20, 2012 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
46
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews
Positive:
10
Mixed:
18
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallJan 20, 2012
Thankfully, much of Red Tails is spent in the skies, where fighter planes swoop and zoom in thrilling dogfights with incendiary direct hits. Executive producer George Lucas apparently gave Hemingway the keys to his CGI kingdom, creating marvelously designed in-flight action and a sappy, snappy salute to the Tuskegee Airmen. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchKevin C. JohnsonJan 20, 2012
Overreaching fits of melodrama, occasionally stilted dialogue, and performances by Gooding Jr. and Howard that are mostly a series of serious faces can't keep the shiny Red Tails from taking flight. Read full review
75
New York PostLou LumenickJan 20, 2012
A well-acted, well-directed (by TV veteran Anthony Hemingway) popcorn movie with great aerial battles and solid dramatic scenes that hold your attention for two good hours. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicRandy CordovaJan 19, 2012
Perhaps the movie's most surprising feat? Somehow, the darned thing mostly works, probably because its heart is in the right place. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianShawn LevyJan 19, 2012
Kudos to the makers Red Tails for paying homage to a remarkable group of men and their genuinely heroic deeds, and a hat-tip as well for the idea that the best way to tell the story was the old-fashioned way. But would that the film's old-school aura felt knowingly retro rather than dutifully rote. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanJan 18, 2012
As long as it stays in the air, Red Tails is a compelling sky-war pageant of a movie. On the ground, it's a far shakier experience: dutiful and prosaic, with thinly scripted episodes that don't add up to a satisfying story. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJan 20, 2012
Sadly, the result is a disappointment. Sure, the aerial battles are technically adept and occasionally exhilarating, but it's almost painful to sit through some of the "drama" that occurs on the ground. Read full review
63
USA TodayClaudia PuigJan 19, 2012
David Oyelowo stands out as the daredevil Joe "Lightning" Little, the unit's best flier. With his bravery and bravado, he's the film's most complex character. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaJan 19, 2012
There isn't a real, flesh-and-blood figure in the bunch. Everything about Red Tails - the breaking down of racial barriers, the military achievements, the courage and sacrifice - is diminished in the process. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertJan 18, 2012
Red Tails is entertaining. Audiences are likely to enjoy it. The scenes of aerial combat are skillfully done and exciting. Read full review
60
Boxoffice MagazineSara Maria VizcarrondoJan 20, 2012
Such a story is made to be colored in jumbo crayon, and at first you might long for a more nuanced approach, but this film was produced in the 1940's serial style that's made Lucas Films enormous. Read full review
60
MovielineStephanie ZacharekJan 19, 2012
In the end Red Tails is mostly about the coolness of flying. Its heart is in the clouds, instead of with the men at the controls. Read full review
58
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerJan 20, 2012
When a great movie subject results in a middling movie, the loss is double. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter TraversJan 27, 2012
You leave Red Tails thinking of what might have been instead of what is – a missed opportunity. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovJan 25, 2012
Red Tails is both a stirring and simplistic tribute to the men that not only shattered the U.S. Army Air Corps' racial barrier but also saved the lives of many a white, B-17 crew member, all while downing countless numbers of Hitler's formidable, jet-propelled Luftwaffe. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineJesse CataldoJan 20, 2012
Where Spielberg has made WWII a venue for his sanctimonious side, a platform to convince viewers that war is indeed hell, Lucas is still in a state of pre-adolescent fascination with the conflict. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisJan 19, 2012
The movie is so desperate to be palatable, to appeal to everybody that it doesn't taste like anything. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyJan 19, 2012
Every character here is so squeaky-clean, and the prejudice as depicted is so toothless and easily overcome, that the film feels like a gingerly fantasy version of what, in real life, was an exceptional example of resilient trail-blazing. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJan 19, 2012
Red Tails squanders a great subject, reducing the real-life struggles and fierce heroics of the Tuskegee Airmen to rickety cliche. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubKeith PhippsJan 18, 2012
The aerial sequences look an awful lot like X-wing-versus-TIE-fighter battles and the effects have the same not-quite-solid feel of the Star Wars prequels. When the heroes crash, they go up in blazes of digital glory that seem just as artificial as the plotting that brought them to their fates. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriJan 19, 2012
For all the occasional grace of its high-flying derring-do, Red Tails barely feels like a movie. It's an uncertain hodgepodge of impulses and desires that never coheres enough to even crash and burn. Read full review
40
The New York TimesStephen HoldenJan 19, 2012
To say that this live-action comic book lives up to Mr. Lucas's description is not a wholehearted endorsement. Are teenage boys as naïve today as they were 60 or more years ago? And much of the dialogue is groaningly clunky. But so it was back then. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternJan 19, 2012
One could argue that the target audience - black teenagers, Mr. Lucas has said - might be most receptive to a film that conveys history through contemporary entertainment. But this isn't contemporary entertainment, it's antiquated kitsch reprocessed by the producer's nostalgia for the movies of his boyhood. The story has been stripped of historical context - don't black teenagers and everyone else deserve hard facts? - and internal logic. Read full review
40
TimeMary PolsJan 19, 2012
Alas, it was George Lucas who became captivated by the Tuskegee Airmen and has, after many years as devoted producer, managed to turn their story into 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." Read full review
40
VarietyPeter DebrugeJan 19, 2012
Apart from the occasional thrill provided by CG-enhanced aerial dogfights, this stuffy history lesson about the groundbreaking African-American fighter pilot division never quite takes off, weighed down by wooden characters and leaden screenwriting. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierJan 19, 2012
George Lucas produced this candy-coated, fictionalized drama, and 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. Read full review
40
Chicago ReaderBen SachsJan 19, 2012
George Lucas served as executive producer for this effects-heavy action film about the Tuskegee Airmen, and it feels as synthetic and dull as "The Phantom Menace." Read full review
40
Time OutKeith UhlichJan 17, 2012
So narratively old-fashioned it creaks. Read full review
38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)James AdamsJan 19, 2012
Virtue aside, however, Red Tails is a lousy film. Not wincingly bad, mind you, just mediocre. Read full review
38
Washington PostMark JenkinsJan 19, 2012
The war-movie cliches are as abundant as the antiaircraft fire, and the dialogue as wooden as a balsa glider. The leading characters are issued one personality trait apiece, and some don't even get that. Cuba Gooding Jr., for example, plays Maj. Emanuelle Stance as a man who smokes a pipe. Read full review
30
SlateForrest WickmanJan 19, 2012
Remember that scene from "Raiders of the Lost Ark," when a swastika-stamped Nazi crate explodes for no good reason (beyond the fact that the Ark hates Nazis)? Red Tails is like that, only less awesome, and considerably longer. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleAmy BiancolliJan 19, 2012
What's missing is any hint of realism. There's no grit to it anywhere. Read full review
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