"Red Tails," George Lucas's Tale of Tuskegee Airmen Mr. Lucas financed the $58 million movie, which the major studios didn't want to touch, because of the box office limitations of its mostly African-American cast. "It is exactly like "Flying Leathernecks," only this one was held up for release since 1942, when it was shot," Mr. Lucas said. In structure and tone, "Red Tails" proudly harks back to the 1940s and "50s, when good guys were good, and bad guys bad. To say that this live-action comic book lives up to Mr. Lucas's description is not a wholehearted endorsement. Are teenage boys as naïve today as they were 60 or more years ago? And much of the dialogue is groaningly clunky. But so it was back then. At least "Red Tails," the first feature film directed by Anthony Hemingway ("Treme," "The Wire") from a screenplay by John Ridley ("U-Turn," "Three Kings," "Undercover Brother") and Aaron McGruder ("Boondocks"), is a mildly entertaining classroom instructional about the Tuskegee Airmen. This much-decorated squadron of African-American pilots, whose P-51 Mustangs were painted with red tails, flew thousands of missions between 1943 and 1945. They discredited an outrageously racist 1925 Army War College study that asserted that blacks lacked the intelligence, ambition and courage to serve in combat. The mere existence of this movie and Mr. Lucas's imprimatur could be seen as significant morale boosters for African-American men whose World War II service still remains woefully underrecognized. The movie's most exciting moments are its heavily computer-generated aerial battle sequences. If the scenes of P-51"s weaving in and out of a fleet of Flying Fortresses are not especially realistic, they still provide sensations of Olympian loftiness and roller coaster dips. The enemy airfields are destroyed in giant fireballs with billowing black smoke that awaken the same atavistic feelings of awed satisfaction provided by period combat films and wartime newsreels. As the story's unproven heroes - the pilots in the 332nd Fighter Group based at the Ramitelli Airfield in Italy - rise to the challenge, they overturn every racist cliché applied to "Negroes." And when they do, most of their suspicious white counterparts shed their prejudice and welcome them into their ranks. The plot revolves around the uneasy friendship of Joe Little (David Oyelowo), known as Lightning, and his superior, Marty Julian (Nate Parker), nicknamed Easy. Lightning is a strutting daredevil and womanizer who time and again breaks protocol to show off his skills as a pilot, often leaving a formation to embark on an independent last-minute bombing foray. When the group is instructed to fly as a protective force alongside bombers, it is all he can do to hold back and refrain from breaking ranks. While in his plane he spies a beautiful Italian girl on a rooftop, then later tracks her down and successfully woos her with a copy of "Italian for Beginners" in hand. Easy is a worrywart who blames himself for any little thing that goes wrong and stills his anxieties with booze. Despite his weakness for the bottle, he is a heroic presence who exudes some of the gravitas associated with Denzel Washington. Cuba Gooding Jr. is Maj. Emmanuel Stone, the unit's pipe-smoking commander, and Terrence Howard is Col. A. J. Bullard, Major Stone's Washington-based superior who, when the unit seems in danger of being shut down, successfully lobbies for the squadron to be given newer planes and more important missions. The movie is very blunt about racism, which extends from the top down. When Lightning is ousted from a whites-only officers club, epithets fly. The Washington brass includes an outspokenly bigoted Southern colonel (Bryan Cranston). The mostly happy ending is as satisfying as a snack of milk and cookies after a ninth grade softball game. "Red Tails" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has scenes of the severely wounded. Directed by Anthony Hemingway; written by John Ridley and Aaron McGruder; music by Terence Blanchard; produced by Rick McCallum and Charles Floyd Johnson; released by 20th Century Fox. WITH: Nate Parker (Easy Julian), David Oyelowo (Lightning Little), Ne-Yo (Smokey Salem), Elijah Kelley (Joker George), Cuba Gooding Jr. (Maj. Emmanuel Stance) and Terrence Howard (Col. A. J. Bullard).