Wasn’t this the plan all along, for George Lucas to take his Star Wars billions and plough them back into brave, non-Hollywood projects?
In fact this too rare Lucas film effort is both brave and stultifyingly conventional (Lucas to a tee), a rousing story of black fighter-pilots in World War 2 that the studios wouldn’t touch, given a deadeningly straight forward treatment (“Gee, I was sure wrong about those black pilots,” the brick-subtle dialogue might as well read).
Shame, too, because the HBO-heavy cast is excellent and the aerial dogfighting (full circle for Lucas, WW 2 being his X-Wing inspiration) is true blockbuster standard.
