THE TUSKEGEE AIRMEN Movie Review

1995 Robert Markowitz

This made-for-cable feature is a throwback to the unit pictures of the late 1940s, and it shares the same flaws and rewards. The production values are noticeably substandard, particularly in the combination of new and archival aerial footage, and the script is a collection of cliches. But cliches can be comforting, and the film is built on powerful convictions. More important, it explores a neglected chapter in the history of American race relations.

At the beginning of World War II, the armed services, like the rest of society, were strictly segregated. Some have called the system American apartheid, particularly in the South. But black leaders had pressed for change, and a few months before the war began, the Army Air Corps announced that black pilots would be trained at the newly constructed Tuskegee Air Base. Pilots are officers, and that was the cause of considerable controversy at the time. The film doesn't really deal with most of that background. Instead, it begins with one of the most familiar images of flying films: a boy in a field playing with a toy airplane; he looks up to see a biplane coming in for a landing and chases after it.

This time, though, the boy is black and he grows up to be Hannibal Lee Jr. (Laurence Fishburne), who boards a train in Iowa and heads south for Tuskegee, Alabama. En route, he meets Walter “Stick” Peoples (Allen Payne), a licensed pilot, and Billy “ATrain” Roberts (Cuba Gooding Jr.), the fast-talking kid. Then at the base, he meets Leroy Cappy (Malcolm Jamal Warner), the quiet serious one, and Lt. Glenn (Courtney B. Vance), the veteran who will train them to be fighter pilots. Any fan will immediately recognize them as variations on the same stereotypes introduced in Hell's Angels (1930) and reworked dozens of times since.

The point of the film, though, is the “other enemy” that these young men face in their development as pilots, entrenched racial prejudice at every level of the service. For every white officer with a degree of enlightenment like Col. Rogers (Daniel Hugh-Kelly), there is the openly disdainful Maj. Joy (Christopher McDonald) and Sen. Conyers (John Lithgow) who will anything to keep black people in their place. But the filmmakers never let that side of the story take too much from the more traditional military aspects.

Of course, not all of the young men make it through flight school. Even more are lost when they become the 99th Pursuit Squadron and are stationed in a North African backwater. When, at length, the 99th becomes an important part of the war in Italy, they face even more problems. Throughout, Laurence Fishburne turns in a quietly competent performance reminiscent of Jimmy Stewart or Henry Fonda. Lee doesn't swagger; he simply does his job and demands that those around him do theirs.

Unfortunately, he gets little help from the special effects department. Though a few of the flying sequences—featuring Stearmans, T-6s, and P-51 Mustangs—are handled well, the actual combat footage is so jarringly rough that the big scenes don't put the viewer in the cockpit the way the best flying films do. Perhaps if the movie had been made in black-and-white, the way its cinematic ancestors were, and given a rougher, scrappier look, it might have flown higher.

Even so, The Tuskegee Airmen is a good story that scratches the surface of an area that American movies have largely ignored.

Cast: Laurence “Larry” Fishburne (Hannibal Lee Jr.), Cuba Gooding Jr. (Billy Roberts), Allen Payne (Walter Derrick Peoples III), Malcolm Jamal Warner (Leroy Cappy), Courtney B. Vance (Lt. Glenn), Andre Braugher (Lt. Col. Benjamin O. Davis), John Lithgow (Sen. Conyers), Rosemary Murphy (Eleanor Roosevelt), Christopher McDonald (Maj. Sherman Joy), Vivica A. Fox (Charlene), Daniel Hugh-Kelly (Col. Noel Rogers), David Harrod (White pilot #1), Eddie Braun (Tail gunner), Bennet Guillory (Hannibal's father); Written by: Paris Qualles, Ron Hutchinson, Trey Ellis; Cinematography by: Ronald Orieux; Music by: Lee Holdridge. Producer: William C. Carraro, Frank Price, Price Ent., HBO Pictures. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running Time: 107 minutes. Format: VHS.