We like these guys. At least I did. The fliers and ground support of Red Tails, also fictional, are mostly war movie types some with colorful tics or descriptive nicknames, like Declan “Winky“ Hall (Leslie Odom. Jr.), Leon “Neon“ Edwards (Kevin Phillips), Andrew “Smoky“ Salem (Neyo), Antwan “Coffee“ Coleman (Andre Royo) and Samuel “Joker“ George (Elijah Kelley). Among the more notable of the bunch, for personality and screen time, are squadron leader Marty “Easy” Julian (Nate Parker), who likes whiskey; Ray “Junior” Gannon (Tristan Wills), who’d rather be “Senior” and whose back row status makes him chamf even more at the bit; and Joe “Lightning” Little (David Oylelowo), the charismatic star pilot, daredevil and lover-boy of the group. (Lightning, a great magnetic character, played with lots of swagger and pizzazz by Oylelowo, is the equivalent to someone like Steve McQueen as “Cooler King” Hilts in The Great Escape, the guy we all wanted to be when we were kids and saw that movie.)There’s no suspense about what’s going to happen in Red Tails overall, except over who lives and who dies. (Suspense enough for some, I guess). We know who won the war and we aren’t really worried about the Tuskegee group as a whole. So our pleasure in the movie, if we have any, comes from following characters we like though hazardous situations that we know not all of them will survive.

Howard’s Bullard, who’s no go-along guy, keeps up the pressure to get his men their shot and make nonsense out of that “report.” And finally, the brass relents, and the Airmen get to fly (in special signature planes with red-painted tails), and of course they prove themselves magnificently. Some die, some live, and almost all get their moments in the sun and in the exploding skies, in Lucas-style dogfights that look like William Wellman’s Wings crossed with Star Wars. Those fights, which I found enthralling, are, all by themselves, enough to recommend this movie, especially if you were a kid who loved the better buddy-buddy war movies like  The Great Escape. (If you did, there’s an escape here too, by impatient Junior, from “Stalag 18” — the one after Stalag 17, of course.)

Writers John Ridley (U-Turn) and Aaron McGruder (Boondocks) don’t try to give these characters, either the officers or the men — or their sometimes supportive, sometimes prejudiced white colleagues (played by Bryan Cranston, Gerald McRaney and others) — too much depth or nuance. Following what I’m sure are Lucas’ intentions, they try to make them all likable or pungent movie star or character actor types, whom we’ll follow and worry about and root for (or against) through the blazing dogfights — as we did John Wayne as Sgt. Stryker or Lt. “Rusty” Ryan in Sands of Iwo Jima or They Were Expendable, Fonda as Mr. Roberts, Robert Mitchum as Lt. Walker in The Story of G. I. Joe, or John Garfield as the aerial gunner Joe Winocki in Air Force.

Most of those movies have become classics, of course, and the star performances in them have become classics as well — and Lucas and his fellow filmmakers try to put Red Tails in the same groove. Maybe that’s a big part of the problem this movie has for some. They’re judging it not as a regular show, but as a possible classic, as Oscar material (which it is, on its technical side) and therefore judging it a misfire on that high level. But you don‘t have to put Red Tails on that high an echelon to enjoy it — though I agree: It would have been nice if this movie achieved great drama as well as great action. It doesn’t.

Still, Red Tails’ neg squad, who all make some good points, seem to want to see Lucas and company — the writers and director Anthony Hemingway (TV‘s The Wire and CSI:NY), who reportedly had some re-shoot help from Lucas) try harder in those areas, psychology and sociology and history, where Red Tails falls somewhat short — and that most action films tend to skimp on as well (including this week‘s action critics’ darling, Haywire.) They want Lucas to show ambition in other areas than physical spectacle. But,  by telling even a part of the Tuskegee Airmen story, and putting it in a big movie package pitched toward a big audience, with a huge gallery of characters, multiple storylines and dozens of speaking parts, Lucas, and Hemingway and the others, are showing more ambition, trying harder, maybe failing sometimes, but still deserving of that ordinary people’s applause I heard at the screening.

By the way, The Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy, who wrote a mixed review, makes a good point about the hazards of modern political correctness in Red Tails, and in American ’30s-’40s-’50s period movies in general. As McCarthy notes, in a movie that obviously spent a great deal of time and research on physical details, it is ridiculous to mostly banish cigarettes from the Ramitelli Airfield, and turn the 332^nd into a virtual smokeless zone, except for Cuba Gooding’s pipe and a few other deviations — especially since, in 1944, cigarettes were part of the soldiers’ standard kits.

I get the idea: This isn’t all that realistic a movie anyway and the moviemakers are trying to be good citizens and avoid putting ideas into the heads of impressionable kids, who might want to run out after the show and smoke like their heroes. So why not ban all guns and bombs and machine guns from the movie? Last I heard, they can kill you too. too.

I know, I know: It’s easier to buy a pack of Marlboros than an Uzi…Well, I don’t smoke. Never have, except when I was playing poker as a golf caddy. And never will. (Humphrey Bogart’s death from lung cancer was enough to scare me off.) But, if you’re worried about showing nicotine sticks and being a bad influence on young people, why not show it the way it was, but also include a sympathetic character who chain-smokes and is obviously headed for a death on the ground, like his buddies’ in the sky? Is that real enough? Anyway, I think the whole question of how we’re driven to emulate characters in movies, is a dubious one — especially as it applies to a movie industry that shows so much torture and mayhem and murder on screen.

I may have wanted to be a Cooler King when I was a kid, but I never tried to hop a motorcycle over a fence with the Nazi army chasing me, like Steve McQueen — though God knows, at one time, I wanted to.

By the way, here’s a salute to the Tuskegee Airmen. They deserve our best — which is probably the whole point of the argument. The money argument too.

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