XoWizIama Excellent adaptation.

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

Josephina Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Robert J. Maxwell Nice flight scenes. We follow the first "Negro" pilots through their training in Alabama, where they suffer the usual insults and some of them are washed out or die. They begin in Boeing biplanes and in advanced training use T-6 Texans. Want to see what a Texan looks like? Watch any movie before CGI, when they invariably impersonated Japanese Zeros. Some of the footage is from gun cameras inserted into the movie, as is some footage from "The Battle of Britain". At one point, attacked by Me-109s, they shoot down a Focke-Wulf 190. And they blow up a Japanese destroyer off Italy.None of this is irritating because the narrative is so strong and the performances are mostly very good, despite the required stilted speeches about whose country are we fighting for. Andre Braugher plays the real-life Benjamin Davis -- and he does it to a T, with little drama and maximum effectiveness. He's an exceptional actor.John Lithgow plays a dilatory senator who has absolute proof that the Negro brain is different from the white brain in a way that makes them sluggish and unfit for aerial combat. It seems crazy now but, difficult as it is to believe, whole swaths of the country felt the same way in 1943. Hell, into 1953 and later.It's not a subtle movie. Nothing is much hinted at or suggested. If there's an emotion it's all spelled out for the view in the dialog "E-M-O-T-I-O-N." And in fact the movie itself, pregnant with promise, is almost ruined by the dialog during dogfights. "Take that, Kraut, and say hello to Hitler for me." That's verbatim and it's straight out of a flag-waving martial movie from the early war years, or out of some comic book.It's well worth catching, especially if you like airplanes as much as I do -- although I must say they haven't treated me well over the years. Just shut your ears through some of the shouting, which falls just short of Henry V's "Once more unto the breach."

dimplet There was a time when I had never heard of the Tuskegee Airmen, but that was long ago, before this movie came out 20 years ago. I knew the basic facts from various sources, so the movie held no big surprises. But for those unfamiliar with the story, it will come as a revelation.The movie repeats the myth that no bombers were lost to enemy aircraft while being escorted by the Tuskegee Airmen. At the time, 1995, this was still believed to be true. But around 2004-2007, studies found 27 bombers were, in fact lost, still well below the average of 46 by comparable P-51 fighter groups. More astonishing to me is that they took on the new German ME 262 jet fighters and the ME 163 Komet rocket-powered fighters in a raid over Germany, shooting down three jets in one day! Now that would have been an exciting scene for the movie.I've been reading a book on the history of WWII, "Roosevelt's Centurions," and the movie's presentation of the issue of racism in the military seems to get the balance about right. It is so sad to look back upon the racial segregation in the American military in WWII, given we were fighting fascists who were racists. The movie makes this point well, especially with the accurate point of the preferential treatment of German POWs. But our Allies were often even more racist in their treatment toward black GIs overseas, so it was not as easy to solve as it might appear in hindsight. One of the interesting consequences of segregation was that the Army trained 16,000 black support personnel, along with black medical personnel, gunners and navigators. So it provided a skilled foundation for later military desegregation, ordered by President Truman in 1948.Roosevelt was constrained by political considerations, but his wife was not. Eleanor was quite a remarkable lady. Actually, during a visit to the Tuskegee Institute, she flew with the civilian flight instructor, C. Alfred "Chief" Anderson, not one of the recruits. (There's a photo of the two on Wikipedia.) Wikipedia: "In 1940, Anderson was recruited by the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, to serve as the Chief Civilian Flight Instructor for its new program to train black pilots." This might explain the mystery of why the Army located this program in the Deep South. It sounds like the Institute was anticipating the war. Anderson had solid credentials: He created the Civilian Pilot Training for Howard University, Washington, D.C. in the late Thirties. Ironically, Anderson's flight instructor was the German-born Ernest H. Buehl, Sr. "Under Buehl's tutelage and personal insistence, in February 1932, Anderson became the first African American to receive an air transport pilot's license from the Civil Aeronautics Administration."The Tuskegee Airmen, like some other HBO historical movies -- Warm Springs and Truman -- is entertaining and thought provoking. It is historical fiction, not a documentary, but it seems to portray the historical period accurately. The original story was written by Captain Robert W. Williams, the fellow from Ottumwa, Iowa, who corresponded to Hannibal Lee, played by Laurence Fishburne. Aside from Col. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., all the other characters are composites. Here is the tally of sacrifice by the Tuskegee Airmen, from Wikipedia:In all, 992 pilots were trained in Tuskegee from 1941 to 1946. 355 were deployed overseas, and 84 lost their lives in accidents or combat. The toll included 68 pilots killed in action or accidents, 12 killed in training and non-combat missions and 32 captured as prisoners of war.We owe all of the Tuskegee Airmen a debt of gratitude.

dunsuls-1 There is a reason HBO films had a rep for make movies that were ,well,not what Hollywood was making,yet what the public needed.This is such a film.I reviewed Red Tails on my own little blog,and enjoyed it,BUT as I stated it was a little"safe"for the box-office.This is NOT.Far sadder and shameful in the depictions of the disgraceful treatment these WW11 black airman faced.Think of a hundred Jackie Robinsons,who as a Army officer went thru much of the same BEFORE he played Baseball.But this movie is NOT about him. The mostly all black cast is well cast and recognizable and it would seem unfair to name but a few,so I won't .For this film had a true repertory feeling. My favorite scene was when Mrs Roosevelt has a spare of the moment flight at the hands of Lt.Lee and that signals that this group of pilots have finally been accepted to a certain degree,at least to now go oversees at least.In the end most of the airman would probably admit that the destination was worth the rocky ride to get there.They are better men than me,for I would have blown that road up !!!! Thats why their story must always be told and remembered and indeed,celebrated as we do Jackie's.

ruby2andor I enjoyed this film a lot, both for the drama and the action. I watched it on the History Channel where scenes from the film were intercut with commentary from surviving Tuskegee airmen. It made the film that much more fascinating.As one of the other reviewers mentioned, there is one scene where a pilot sinks a German destroyer using only this guns. This is a true event. From the "Tuskegee Airmen" site: "The 332nd Fighter Group also distinguished themselves in June 1944 when two of its pilots flying P-47 Thunderbolt aircraft discovered a German destroyer in the harbor at Trieste, Italy. One of the pilots, Lieutenant Gynne Pierson of the 302nd Fighter Squadron, using only the aircraft's 50-caliber machine guns, strafed the destroyer, causing it to explode and sink."The statement that the 332nd did not lose a single bomber to enemy action is also true. To qualify that, some of the bombers were lost in other ways, but never to enemy planes. In fact, under Benjamin O. Davis' command, the group flew more than 15,000 sorties against the Luftwaffe, shot down 111 enemy aircraft, and destroyed another 150 on the ground, while losing only 66 of their own aircraft to all causes. I am not sure they shot down the FIRST German jet, but they did receive a citation after shooting down some German jets. Again, from the TA website: "The 332nd Fighter Group received the Presidential Unit Citation for its longest bomber escort mission to Berlin, Germany, March 24, 1945. They destroyed three German ME-262 jet fighters and damaged five additional jet fighters without losing any of the bombers or any of its own fighter aircraft to enemy aircraft."Although there were no "aces" that came from the 332nd, this was probably because pilots were told not to pursue German planes for the kill once the planes were far enough away that they no longer posed a danger to the bombers.The Tuskegee airmen who commented on this film said that the racism they encountered in real life was much worse than was depicted in the film, but much of the rest of the film was realistic.I found it especially interesting that Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. (played by Andre Braugher) was depicted in this movie. He was a real person who was one of only two black line officers in the U.S. Army at the time--the other was his father. He was one of the first recruits trained at Tuskegee and received his wings in March 1942, after becoming the first black officer to solo an Army Air Corps aircraft. After flying in the Mediterranean, he returned to the US, and took command of the 332d Fighter Group. Eventually, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Following the War, he commanded the 477th Composite Group and the 332d Fighter Wing. In 1953 he again saw combat when he assumed command of the 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing and flew the F-86 in Korea. With his promotion to brigadier general, Davis became the first black man to earn a star in the US Air Force. He retired as a lieutenant general in 1970, and died in 2002, ironically on July 4, at age 89.