Red Tails: George Lucas strikes again (and not in a good way)!

A group of African American pilots, who were part of the Tuskegee Airmen training program, are finally given the chance to engage in aerial combat over the skies of Europe during World War II.

You knew that since this film had George Lucas as its executive producer and it was being produced by Lucasfilm, the CGI and action sequences were going to look and sound amazing. In those aspects, Red Tails did not disappoint as the dogfights, bomber runs and other aerial action kept the audience engaged and intently watching the exploits of the squadron. However, the story and characters tried too hard to fit into the mold of all of those other Hollywood war films and came off as cliched and uninteresting. Films like Glory, which examined the first black regiment in the Civil War, worked so well because the ferocious action on the screen was accentuated by the thought-provoking storytelling and dynamic acting. With Red Tails, the story seemed out of focus, trying to deal with so many insipid and unnecessary subplots, and the characters failed to add anything more than mediocre performances.

If the story could have been reigned in to focus specifically on the bonds between the pilots and show their struggles in combat, as well as in facing bigotry from their own white counterparts, perhaps Red Tails would have been more than a standard war film which never distinguished itself from the rest.

Grade: D+

Battle: Los Angeles; Humans vs. Aliens, guess who wins?

Alien forces have invaded Earth. When they attack Los Angeles, California it's up to a platoon of Marines to stop them. But will they be able to?

Battle: Los Angeles played out like every other war film you have ever seen in your lifetime. The audience was introduced to a group of Marines, just enough so that their particular caricature (be it the shiny new Lieutenant who does not know what he is doing, the grizzled veteran Staff Sergeant who has a troubled past, the Corporal who is about to get married, the one badass female soldier (played by Michelle Rodriguez, of course), etc.) was easily recollected. Next they face the imminent threat, in this case it’s an invading alien force, which at first seems overwhelming but just might be defeated if they are able to band together and fight as a team. If you realize this is what awaits you with Battle, then you should be able to enjoy it for the action filled adventure director Jonathan Liebesman intended it to be. The film was almost like War of the Worlds meets Black Hawk Down as the Marines engaged in urban combat with the alien menace while the city of Santa Monica burned around them.

Sure, there were some obvious flaws which took the film down a couple of notches. The script, for example, seemed like it was cut and pasted together from various World War II, Vietnam and even Gulf War films and featured some rather trite dialogue and “forced” moments of emotion. Most of these emotional scenes involved the soldiers interacting with a group of civilians they were trying to rescue from behind enemy lines. But instead of making the soldiers seem more human and give them some other purpose aside from kicking alien butt, these scenes slowed down the action and felt completely out of place. Had Liebesman really wanted to get at the emotional core of the film, he should have concentrated more on the relationships between the soldiers (and he should have got another screenwriter too). Thankfully Aaron Eckhart (as Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz) worked through the cliché ridden lines and delivered a convincing enough performance to keep the audience engaged between shootouts and explosions.

Battle: Los Angeles is not another Saving Private Ryan, but the visceral thrills and nonstop action were enough to keep most entertained for its two hour running time.

Grade: B-

Letters From Iwo Jima: A stunning achievement

War films are another one of those Hollywood genres which tend to follow very well - worn patterns when it comes to plot, action and characters. We, as American, are used to seeing the American experiences on the battlefield and are usually only shown the cruelty of our enemy. But Letters From Iwo Jima challenges those conventions and presents the audience with the story from the other side of those battle lines.

As the Allied forces prepare to storm the beaches of Iwo Jima, Japanese General Tadamichi Kuribayashi and his troops know they are facing staggering odds. With a limited amount of time and resources, all of the Japanese troops realize that the impending fight just might be their last.

How is it that Mr. Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood, was able to create such a stirring and devastatingly emotional war film about the Japanese experience during the famous World War II fight? He humanized the Japenese solider and gave the normally faceless enemy, (at least in most American made war films), soldiers names and stories, Western audiences are only used to experiencing war through the eyes of an American soldier but by doing this, he opened the audiences' eyes to the insanity that is war and the trials that all sides face. Eastwood also broke standard war film tradition by showing the loosing side of war and all of the chaos, loss and mourning they had to work through. This served to, again, humanize a normally cliched set of characters. To see the depth to which the Japanese went to in order to stave off the enemy, including a terrifyingly realistic scene in which some soldiers committed suicide via grenade to avoid capture, was remarkable and fell into sharp contrast with the way Westerners view warfare. One came away feeling a great respect for the Japanese soldiers’ plight and, hopefully, a deeper desire to make sure destructive conflicts such as World War II never happen again. As the companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima carried a heavy burden of trying to match or surpass it in emotional resonance and overall magnificence, a task which it achieved in stunning fashion.

Grade: A