Laurence Fishburne leads Airmen's stellar ensemble cast, which includes Malcolm Jamal-Warner, Allen Payne, Courtney B. Vance, Andre Braugher, Mekhi Phifer, John Lithgow, Christopher McDonald and Cuba Gooding Jr., who also plays a Tuskegee airman in Red Tails. Vance plays one of their training officers, a World War I vet who flew for Canada and is the only person on the base with actual combat experience. Braugher portrays historical figure Benjamin O. Davis Jr., commander of the Tuskegee Airmen and the first African-American Air Force general.
The film opens with Fishburne's character, Hannibal Lee, as an Iowa boy lying in a field of grass, gazing at the sky and dreaming of flying. The scene shifts to Lee as man, about to leave home for Tuskegee, Ala., where he'll join other college graduates in an experimental government training program aimed at seeing if blacks can be trained as pilots. They'll face open hostility from many government officials and some training officers, and will question themselves about serving in a segregated military for a country that denies them the rights they will be risking their lives to protect.
Los Angeles resident Levi Thornhill was one of the Tuskegee Airmen who came. He had been part of the original 332nd Fighter Group, who served with distinction as airplane escorts for bomber planes on strategic missions in Europe. After the film, he praised Lucas for his attention to detail and gave "Red Tails" a ringing endorsement.
"I'm wondering where in the world [Lucas] found all those P-51s, the Red Tails," said the 89-year-old Thornhill. "I think he did a very good job, a very good job. And I've seen a lot of movies with airplanes in it!"
As a crew chief at the all-black Ramitelli airfield in Italy, Thornhill was in charge of making sure the planes were kept in the best possible shape for combat. While racist policies shaped and limited his early years in the military, he said it was easy to keep a clear head about the Red Tail missions while in Italy.
"The great thing was that there wasn't much interaction between whites and Negroes because we were segregated," Thornhill said bluntly. "We could pay attention to what the hell we were supposed to do and didn't have to deal with all that other crap."
Still, he kept tabs on the burgeoning civil rights movement back home with help from family and friends. "I used to get newspaper clippings from home with stuff that I needed to know -- good and bad stories about what was happening between the races," he recalled
After his original service ended, Thornhill re-enlisted in the Army because he couldn't find another job. The re-enlistment eventually turned into an Army career, during which he saw a multitude of changes, including the desegregation of the military. He retired in 1965 with the rank of major and went on to become an airline engineer.
The film opens with Fishburne's character, Hannibal Lee, as an Iowa boy lying in a field of grass, gazing at the sky and dreaming of flying. The scene shifts to Lee as man, about to leave home for Tuskegee, Ala., where he'll join other college graduates in an experimental government training program aimed at seeing if blacks can be trained as pilots. They'll face open hostility from many government officials and some training officers, and will question themselves about serving in a segregated military for a country that denies them the rights they will be risking their lives to protect.
Los Angeles resident Levi Thornhill was one of the Tuskegee Airmen who came. He had been part of the original 332nd Fighter Group, who served with distinction as airplane escorts for bomber planes on strategic missions in Europe. After the film, he praised Lucas for his attention to detail and gave "Red Tails" a ringing endorsement.
"I'm wondering where in the world [Lucas] found all those P-51s, the Red Tails," said the 89-year-old Thornhill. "I think he did a very good job, a very good job. And I've seen a lot of movies with airplanes in it!"
As a crew chief at the all-black Ramitelli airfield in Italy, Thornhill was in charge of making sure the planes were kept in the best possible shape for combat. While racist policies shaped and limited his early years in the military, he said it was easy to keep a clear head about the Red Tail missions while in Italy.
"The great thing was that there wasn't much interaction between whites and Negroes because we were segregated," Thornhill said bluntly. "We could pay attention to what the hell we were supposed to do and didn't have to deal with all that other crap."
Still, he kept tabs on the burgeoning civil rights movement back home with help from family and friends. "I used to get newspaper clippings from home with stuff that I needed to know -- good and bad stories about what was happening between the races," he recalled
After his original service ended, Thornhill re-enlisted in the Army because he couldn't find another job. The re-enlistment eventually turned into an Army career, during which he saw a multitude of changes, including the desegregation of the military. He retired in 1965 with the rank of major and went on to become an airline engineer.
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