Blue Sky (1994)

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

good back-story, and good acting

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

this film was very interesting from both a storytelling view as well as a peek at military life. when a man or woman becomes an officer, the behavior of his/her family is always scrutinized. what shines through this story is the belief that you love a person with all the highs and lows.lange's performance of what appears to be a bipolar woman handling the stress of the military life is very accurate. people handle stress in different ways and hers is with her living out personal desires and dreams.jones shows unflinching devotion to his family as the glue that holds it together. he juggles his wife's erratic behavior with stoic calm while at the same time attempts to help his daughters cope with the challenges of a new move, their mother's antics and their own coming of age.it has been mentioned that the daughters make a viewer feel sorry for them. on the contrary, children are critical of their parents without having the maturity to understand why they do the things they do. that is what this film is about: maturity.the surrounding characters are believable and provide the main characters the ability to play off their substance, whether it is a megalomaniac of a commanding officer or a forever forgiving wife of such a man. as I said previously, it is the maturity of the characters that show how each handles the changing situations presented to them. it is well worth the watch.

In its only nomination in the Oscar sweepstakes for 1994 Jessica Lange won for Best Actress in Blue Sky. After watching Blue Sky I can certainly see why.Blue Sky is set in the years of the Kennedy Administration and it's plot concerns a dedicated Army Major, Tommy Lee Jones and his family consisting of wife Jessica Lange and daughters Amy Locane and Anna Klump. Jones is more than an army officer, he's a nuclear scientist and deeply concerned about the collateral effects of radiation on the population. I well remember the time. President Eisenhower in his second term of office made an unilateral executive decision to stop above ground nuclear testing, but the Russians continued. I well remember Premier Khrushchev in a bit of saber rattling, exploded a one hundred megaton hydrogen bomb.Anyway President Kennedy decided at one point to resume nuclear testing to get the Russians back to the bargaining table for a nuclear test ban treaty. That's the background for this story and we all know that the first thaw in the Cold War was that test ban treaty that was ratified during the summer of 1963.Anyway Jones is looking to ban it all, writing all kinds of reports that the army isn't taking too seriously and in fact transfers him from California to Alabama where he's told in no uncertain terms by his commander Powers Boothe to cool it. The military wasn't exactly thrilled with what Kennedy was trying to do.But Jones has some pressing concerns on the domestic front. Jessica Lange is a lusty woman with needs and her husband isn't doing right by her. She looks like Marilyn Monroe and really does have all the army polishing its brass for her. Including Powers Boothe who sends Jones away so they can play.It all ends in disaster, but Jessica summons up a lot more character than we would have first given her credit for to right the situation. It's in those last scenes that Jessica Lange brought home Oscar.Young Chris O'Donnell is in the cast as well as Carrie Snodgrass as the son and wife of Boothe and O'Donnell the young man about to go to West Point finds out just what kind of rat his father really is. And Boothe does very well as the rat.But in the last twenty minutes of the film Jessica's change in character dominates the film and it's reason enough to check out Blue Sky

Jessica Lange's strong acting abilities are wasted in a rather unlikely role. She portrays Carly Marshall, a woman with a mood swings problem. Her problem becomes quite evident when she can't handle the station transfer that's being given to her military scientist husband, Hank (Tommy Lee Jones). With the talent involved, this should've been better and some script rewritings could've helped.

The film is about the relationship of husband and wife, their troubles and how they cope with it. It also had a side plot about underground nuclear testing, which I don't think was that powerful or had that much of an impact for it to carry though as the finale, which also seem to be wrapped up uneventfully.But the main story is their troubled relationship, and how through good, bad and worse they get through it with each other's support. Jessica Lange's performance as an unstable woman was amazing, not over the top in which it would have been typically done, but was portrayed truely and its fine nuance conveyed the subtle change in her mental state.