Here's a rough outline of Red Tails' two-hour running time: Brave black pilots are stationed in Italy in 1944. They battle the institutionalized racism in the army and swiftly debunk decades of bigotry masquerading as science. The Airmen massacre the living snot out of scores of mean-spirited, smug Nazis. They triumph over their own fears and personal flaws, and even win the hearts and minds of some white dudes along the way. And (spoiler alert) in the end, racism loses, the fascists get owned, and the Tuskegee Airmen (or "Red Tails&quot end up as decorated heroes.

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But the film, released in at the frigid movie-dump weeks of January, lives up to neither the compelling history nor the premise. In fact, the movie is devoid of visceral thrill, drained of emotional energy, and head-scratchingly awful throughout.

Red Tails starts and ends like a bargain bin of lousy movie parts. It combines the paper-thin human drama of Annapolis, the failed storytelling of Men of Honor, the bland CGI action of Flyboys, the acting and line delivery of Troll 2, and the bewilderingly trite dialogue of Pearl Harbor.

"How you like that, Mr. Hitler," exclaims one of the Tuskegee Airmen as he singlehandedly blows up a German naval ship. "Watch out Hitler! Here we come," another pilot blurts out, as more fun carnage ensues. The dialogue is compounded by the fact that every character—even the heroic all-black fighter unit—is essentially a caricature of the era. The most groan-inducing example comes in the form of the main antagonist, an Aryan pilot who the Red Tails nickname "Pretty Boy." When the Nazi flier intones one-liners like "Die, you foolish African!" the German fighters start to seem frighteningly reminiscent of those buzz-killing robots from Lucas's own Revenge of the Sith.