Three days before the release of the Lucasfilm-produced Red Tails, HBO is issuing its ground-breaking version of the same story, The
Tuskegee Airmen, on Blu-ray. The HBO original film
first aired on the premium cable channel almost sixteen years ago and demonstrates, yet again,
how slow Hollywood can be to embrace novel subjects. With the vast canon of World War II
films, it's astonishing that over half a century elapsed before someone thought to make a major
motion picture about the accomplishments of the first African-American combat pilots. HBO
might not have had the budget that Lucasfilm gave Red Tails or the sophisticated effects
provided by Industrial Light and Magic (judging from the trailer), but they did have a story co-written
by Robert W. Williams, who was a Tuskegee Airman, and they assembled a great cast
anchored by Laurence Fishburne, flipping 180 degrees from his Oscar-nominated role as Ike
Turner in What's Love Got to Do with It? It's a square film, even a corny one, but some
stories have earned the right to be square and corny. The saga of skilled, determined men repeatedly
risking (and often sacrificing) their lives for a country where many fellow citizens despised them
as subhuman and wanted them grounded is just such a story.
Most of the characters in The Tuskegee Airmen are fictionalized composites, including
Fishburne's flyer, Hannibal "Iowa" Lee, who is the film's narrative anchor. We see Hannibal
briefly as a kid (Christopher Bevins), playing with a model plane in an Iowa field and chasing
after his father's crop-dusting plane with delight. Very quickly, though, it's 1942, and Hannibal,
now a young man (Fishburne), is bidding his family farewell as he begins the long train ride for
training in Alabama.
En route Hannibal meets other trainees who will become his friends and who, in the time-honored
tradition of military stories, provide a cross-section of personalities: Walter Peoples
(Allan Payne), the intensely driven licensed pilot with an engineering degree and his head always
buried in a copy of Stick and Rudder; Billy "Train" Roberts (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), the fast-talking
Harlem kid whose constant stream of easygoing chatter is a disguise for the smart, ambitious guy
underneath; Leroy Cappy (Malcolm-Jamal Warner), a decent, serious man, who, deep down,
harbors doubts about himself; and Lewis Johns (Mekhi Phifer), a Southerner whose ready smile
masks a deep cynicism about the country he's going off to serve.
The film follows Hannibal and his compatriots from basic training to the eve of one of the
Tuskegee Airmen's longest and most arduous missions, when, on March 24, 1945, their fighter
planes escorted a squad of B-17 bombers from a base in Italy to Berlin and back. The production
used vintage aircraft, vintage aerial footage and shots from previous movies (e.g., Memphis
Belle) to create effective flying sequences on a tight budget. But the film's real drama occurs on
the ground, as the trainees (and, eventually, army pilots) are almost daily reminded of the
obstacles in their path. Their predicament is already there on the ride to Tuskegee. As soon as the
train crosses into the Jim Crow South, Hannibal and his seat mates are hustled off the coach
where they've been riding for the last thousand miles, because the car is now designated "Whites
Only". As a final insult, German P.O.W.'s under guard are allowed to board the car from which
these army enlistees are now barred. In their own country, they rank lower than the enemy.
At Tuskegee, they're introduced to what their immediate superior, Lt. Glenn (Courtney B.
Vance), describes as two different philosophies. One is represented by the base commander,
Colonel Rogers (Daniel Hugh Kelly), who grasps that any man who has reached this point
against such long odds must be both exceptionally talented and defiantly committed. The other is
represented by the chief training officer, Major Joy (Christopher McDonald), who can't believe
any black man could pass the written test required for a pilot without cheating and promptly re-administers it to every trainee. When no one scores
below 95, the major argues that these
valuable training slots could be filled by more "qualified" candidates, but Colonel Rogers shuts
him down. On graduation day, when the major has to join the other officers in pinning wings on
the first African-American pilots in the U.S. military, he looks ill.
Even with exemplary performance, it takes something extra to push the military into letting the
Tuskegee Airmen see active duty. The "something extra" is First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (Rosemary Murphy), who
arrives to tour the facility, then asks for a plane ride with Hannibal Lee. The incident is
historically accurate, though the actual ride was with the chief flying instructor, Charles
Anderson. But the specific identity of the pilot hardly matters. At that point in history, the impact
of a news photograph showing the elderly First Lady with her familiar hat and pearls smiling
confidently in the back seat of a plane being piloted by an African-American cannot be
overstated. Not long after, the 99th (as it was then designated) was off to join the war in northern
Africa.
But even then, there were rumblings in Congress about ending the "experiment". The film
provides a fictional Senator named Conyers (John Lithgow) as the spokesperson for the multiple
voices of opposition, and the arguments deployed by Conyers are by no means unfamiliar. They
would continue to be heard for decades after the war, though the language would gradually
become more coded and politically correct. In the end, Conyers loses the argument, but only
because the 99th's commanding officer, Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. (Andre Braugher), the
only actual historical figure in the film besides Mrs. Roosevelt, shows up with his West Point
bearing and a general supporting him to offer a defense of his men. (The historical reality was
more complex, though dramatically less satisfying.)
Meanwhile, the 99th continues to wrack up achievements, even as it suffers losses. "Friends die
in our business", warned Major Joy during training, and there's a scene late in the film where
Hannibal returns from a mission and looks silently around the base, remembering every friend
he's known and lost. After the 99th is transferred to Italy, it's consolidated with newly arrived
black squadrons from Tuskegee to form the 332nd fighter group, which is assigned to escort
bombers. The group's track record for effectively fending off German attack planes is so
impressive that they become the escort of choice. The film's climax comes when a racist Texas
bomber pilot (Ned Vaughn), who refused to accept that "[fill in the expletive]" could be piloting
those fighter planes, swallows his pride and stands up in a briefing to request the 332nd. Because
when you're responsible for the lives of a bomber crew, you want the best protection there is.
Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no racists in the thick of aerial combat.
When HBO aired The Tuskegee Airmen in 1995, all of its broadcasts were 1.33:1. However,
every DVD release of the film that I've been able to identify has been framed at 1.78:1. It
appears, then, that even as early as the mid-Nineties, HBO was already anticipating eventual HD
broadcasts of its original movies and/or possible theatrical distribution and was having its
productions framed and protected for both ratios. As with another Blu-ray of a film from this
period, Gia, the 1.78:1 framing
does not appear to have been derived by lopping off significant
picture information at top and bottom. Occasionally a shot may appear somewhat tightly framed
(I have included a few examples in the screenshots), but not so much that I would judge the
viewing experience to be compromised.
The 1080p, AVC-encoded image for The Tuskegee Airmen is exceptional, given the vintage and
budget of the project. The source material is in very good shape, and the image is clean and fine-grained. Detail on faces, uniforms and even the fur collars
of the pilots' jackets is excellent. The
color palette is broad and well-delineated, but just slightly faded to convey a period feel. Black
levels are generally accurate, delivering true blacks in those rare nighttime scenes when they're
called for. I saw no indication of high-frequency filtering, transfer-induced ringing or
compression artifacts.
HBO was not yet broadcasting in Dolby Digital when The Tuskegee Airmen first aired; DD itself
was still relatively new to theaters. The original audio format was Dolby Surround, and the 5.1
mix presented on the Blu-ray in DTS lossless was probably created at a later date from the
original tracks for the matrixed mix. There are a number of discrete rear channel effects
involving planes and ground vehicles, though nothing like one would expect from a
contemporary track produced from the ground up for 5.1 delivery. Dialogue is always clear
(though that isn't much of a challenge when conveying enunciators like Andre Braugher and
John Lithgow).
The track's only disappointment is the orchestral score by Lee Holdridge (whose extensive
credits include the cult classic The Beastmaster). The score should be grand, sweeping and
stirring. Instead, it sounds thin, compressed and harsh at the high end—proof positive, for those
who still need it, that lossless treatment doesn't necessarily mean better sound. The quality of the
source material plays a much bigger role than the delivery format, and here the original
recordings appear to be lacking in fidelity and dynamic range.
The sole extra isn't on the disc. It's the digibook packaging containing a
"commemorative book" that artfully mixes black and white production photos from the
film with archival photos of the real flyers from history. Included is a photograph of
screen story co-author Robert W. Williams and a picture of the real First Lady Eleanor
Roosevelt departing on the historic flight depicted in the film.
The exploits of what has come to be known as the Greatest Generation continue to fascinate
viewers, as evidenced by the popularity of contemporary productions like Band of Brothers, The
Pacific and Saving Private Ryan and the enduring interest in classics like Patton and The Longest
Day. But while there is every reason to celebrate the Greatest Generation, it should also be
remembered that, while they were fighting a war against the Axis powers, a small group of them
had to wage a second war against powers at home who wanted to deny them the right to serve,
citing the same spurious arguments ("shiftless", "lazy", "undisciplined", "unintelligent") that had
been repeatedly refuted year after year, most recently at Tuskegee. When the war in Europe and
the Pacific ended, the war on the homefront remained to be fought. The Greatest Generation
entered World War II accompanied by a stain of wrongdoing that extended back to the founding
of the republic (and beyond), and it does them no service to ignore either the stain or the
extraordinary men who transcended it, achieving what many believed impossible to become
some of the war's most decorated heroes. The film and the Blu-ray are highly recommended.
Next January, HBO Home Entertainment will release The Tuskegee Airmen on Blu-ray. This powerful docudrama tells the true story of the first squadron of African-American pilots allowed to fight in World War II. The Tuskegee Airmen is expected to street on January ...
