In summary, a good and bad film.
I have wanted to watch this for ages and as a film I thought that it dealt with the issues of racism very well, as well as acceptance of how people are people, no matter what skin colour they are.
I got the feeling that the film tried to put too much into it as it appeared to only offer a superficial look at many things, an example being the acceptance of the Ray Gun in the POW camp. Saying that, character development is not the main forte of many war films.
This is a story that needs to be told. When I grew up, I can never recall seeing someone non-white in an American war film (I do remember one in 633 Squadron but that character was played by a white actor anyway).
Our past is something that we need to learn from, both the good and the bad. This film, does not explore the characters that much and if not for how it dealt with the subject matter as well as the subject itself, I would not recommend this. But this film in some aspects is more important than other war films. Like most war films it deals with courage, sacrifice and heroism, but unlike others, this also deals with how too many of those whom the Redtails served with had the same views on racial superiority as those they were fighting.
