Red Tails

This film opens with a CGI aerial battle that is literally of the quality I would expect from a direct-to-DVD film by a company like The Asylum. It's shockingly embarrassing for a theatrical release with a $58 million budget. Even the font used in the titles smells like a no budget film. It does get better than this, but not as much as it should. Explosions are all CGI and don't look like they exist in the same plane as the physical objects. Oddly, every German pilot in this film appears to be exactly the same person. Effects aside, this film is intended to play more like a 1950's era war movie than a modern one. That's a valid choice, but it doesn't play like a good one. The story is, on the face of it, an interesting one, but the narrative strokes are so unbelievably broad that the film really doesn't progress after the basic plot setup is done. Some of the actors do a pretty fine job given the one dimensionality of their characters (David Oyelowo is particularly good), but they have precious little to work with.