Red Tails (2012 – Blu-ray)

“And you all thought what? You’d sign up, you’d get shiny boots, a uniform and that’d be the end of 100 years of bigotry? You’re colored men in the white man’s army. It’s a miracle you’re flying fighters in Italy and not mopping latrines in Milwaukee”

Despite a slew of luke warm reviews of ‘Red Tails’ from when it premiered in the US in January, I remained resolutely excited. This is because the aerial footage in the trailers looked breathtaking and because of extra interest kicked off by the controversy. I’ve already touched on that earlier in the year but it’s worth going into what went into the making of this Tuskegee Airmen biopic again.  ‘Red Tails’ has been a passion project for Producer George Lucas for two decades. But George’s desire to make it a huge $58 million war film always ran up against the timid/racist studios desire to not spend that much on a movie with an all-black cast. In the end George decided to fund it out of his own considerable pockets and turn the Directing duties over to ‘The Wire’s Anthony Hemingway who brought with him a roster of acting talent from the very same HBO series. He also brought in Spike Lee’s long-term musical collaborator, trumpeter Terence Blanchard who worked for HBO on Spike’s magnificent ‘When The Levees Broke’ documentary.  This is fitting as it was HBO who  first produced a celebrated TV movie about the Tuskegee Airmen in 1995 (Like ‘Red Tails’ it also starred Cuba Gooding Jr!)..

The movie tells the true story of the renowned Tuskegee Airmen who were a group of African-American pilots in WWII facing massive prejudice but who ultimately proved their worth by being the best of the best. They were so good that Bomber crews would request an escort from “Those planes with the red tails”, sometimes unaware that those planes had black pilots.  The only flaw I could find with ‘Red Tails’ was that it occasionally lurched into that kind of patriotic smaltz that American audiences seem to like but which to British ears sounds phony.  That aside, the performances are brilliant without exception including; R&B singer Ne-Yo’s charming turn as a mumbling Southern pilot with a love of music and chewin’ tobacco, Nate Parker and England’s own David Oyelowo forming the touching friendship at the core of the story and Terrence Howard’s performance was so intense that actor Bryan Cranston didn’t dare meet his steely gaze.  The dog-fighting footage will take your breath away, with the full possibilities of CGI being used to make the camera soar around the planes as they scream past your eyes and ears, it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.  The ensemble cast of lovable roguish airmen reminded me of another WWII film, a favourite of mine, the much underrated 1990 movie ‘Memphis Belle’.

The other day I saw an American import Blu-Ray of ‘Red Tails’ in one of my favourite London haunts The Cinema Store and snapped it up. The transfer is gorgeous, the sound rich and loud and the disc is stuffed with extra features including a feature-length doc.  However it’s disappointing that a film with this much excitement, drama and spectacle should first sneak almost unnoticed onto these shores on the home market instead of as the thundering Cinema Blockbuster it’s meant to be.  A limited release in UK theatres is arriving next week so make sure you ignore the Lucas haters and find a Cinema that is showing Anthony Hemingway’s astounding ‘Red Tails’.

Here’s one of the featurettes featuring the real Airmen meeting the cast while the Director’s mum cooks:

The Bodyguard (1992 – Blu-Ray)

“Alexander Graham Bell, to see Miss Marron… you got an appointment?”

I can’t believe it’s been twenty years since ‘The Bodyguard’ but with Whitney Houston’s recent tragic death I thought it was high time to see it again. I imagine I first saw it on TV (Probably with the F-Bombs badly dubbed out by ITV) when I was about 13 and watched it repeatedly. I was captivated by the romance, the glamour and the danger but has it stood the test of time?

Well in short it has, it’s even better than I remember it and this gorgeous Blu-Ray presentation helps!. If you haven’t seen it, the plot concerns Houston as a famous singer who having received death threats reluctantly hires Kevin Costner as her bodyguard. The romance is beautifully played by the two leads as it seems to grow subtly throughout, even in the passages between their scenes. Houston’s performance is at first all showbiz arrogance but this peals away to reveal a frightened isolated woman trapped by fame. Of course her vocal performances are astounding and no better than in the final emotional ‘Casablanca‘-esque finale.

The filmmakers decision to have a black woman as the romantic female lead to Costner’s white male lead in this potential blockbuster was brave twenty years ago. But the choice to make no reference to it in the script was also way ahead of its time. It would still be ten years before Halle Berry would become the first black woman to win a best actress Oscar. And now, while a couple of box office titans like Denzil Washington and Will Smith give the impression that the movie industry has changed, a couple of recent examples show that isn’t necessarily the case.

George Lucas has been trying to bring 2012 Tuskegee-Airmen biopic ‘Red Tails’ to the screen for more than twenty years before finally fronting the entire $58 million budget himself because studios wouldn’t put their money behind an all black cast. Also, Spike Lee sued and defeated the worldwide distributer for his magnificent 2008 Buffalo-Soldier war epic ‘Miracle At St. Anna’ when they refused to put it out in cinemas. When will the industry learn that like ‘The Bodyguard’ two decades ago, if you simply make a great film and promote it properly the audiences will flock to it in droves no matter the skin colour of your cast.