Operation Blue Sky

It is always a pleasure to watch giants in some film which is driven not by effects , explosions and rap-style language but by old-fashioned story and , simply , eye-popping acting , and two main actors , Mr T. Jones and , specially , Mme J. Lange deliver this in full . This smaller , cheaper film deals with the relationships between the military personnel and their spouses , where J. Lange portrays perfectly a lascivious southern belle with too grand illusions of an acting career, who with her sexual escapades becomes a sort of house-hold name in all the bases her husband is sent to , she being slightly neurotic , while tensions and constant arguments between the two are a norm , and their two beautiful daughters watch this in silence , being even more mature then their own mother . It is interesting to see Jones 's character always forgiving his wife , loving her completely , never hitting her , or calling her names .And when the viewer is almost certain that a typical and clichéd climax is inevitable , i.e. a fight between the couple with him stabbing his wife , the film takes a completely different turn , where Lange's character shows her southern true mettle and love for her husband, who becomes a victim of higher national interests . Briefly , a school of great , traditional acting ,light years away from today's self-proclaimed thespians with artificially rounded lips or feminine neurotic outbursts for no reasons , being on the same level as small children demanding a candy .

"Blue Sky" might've made for a great night of television had it premiered on HBO or Showtime as a cable-film. With somewhat reduced expectations coupled with the intimacy of watching the movie on the small screen, one might be inclined to forgive the film for its lack of scope. Set in Alabama in the mid-1950s, Jessica Lange plays an Army engineer's wife and the mother of two young girls who is tired of being dragged from one military base to the next. She harbors a dangerous, possibly manic-depressive side, and makes life difficult for everybody--leaving a trail of gossip and bad blood behind her. Tommy Lee Jones is her patient, loving husband, and Powers Boothe is Jones' newest Commanding Officer who sees only Lange's sexy externals and desires her. All three performances are very good (with Lange winning the Best Actress Oscar, possibly due to a slow year for women in film); however, the picture takes a wrong turn in its third act and finishes limply. Wolfish Boothe becomes a deceitful villain (as if being a cheating husband wasn't enough!), while Lange's volatile Carly is sent out on a limb to save her husband from the clutches of the ignorant, power-hungry government. Had the script stayed true to the character conflicts (which would have matched the film's modest budget), this may have been an effective little soaper. Unfortunately, too many ambitious ideas are cranked out in the picture's squashy final stages, the result being a dramatic film which is dramatically unfulfilling. **1/2 from ****

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

I have admired Jessica Lange's acting ability for years. She is able to convey a bimbo-like image with such intelligence and strength, an achievement that few actresses could pull off well. It's easy to see from BLUE SKY why Lange was chosen to play Blanche Dubois in the TV version of "A Streetcar Named Desire." She plays in this Oscar-winning role an emotionally unbalanced wife and mother named Carly, the type of woman that makes small-town wives fend for the safety of their marriages. She is very sensual, sometimes obnoxious, and definitely a show-stopper. Tommy Lee Jones is a nuclear scientist employed in the military during the early sixties, fearful of another meltdown. He also has to secure his wife's sexual appetites, which could easily get out of control, especially around a libido-driven sargent played by Powers Boothe. The nuclear storyline, almost a backdrop,gets in the way of the meat of the plot, that of the sensuous Lange and the two daughters. I'm not saying the actors in this film don't have power, they most certainly do, but they seem to be caught in a run-of-the-mill soap opera coloured by nuclear testing. Jessica Lange does have an award-worthy part to play, but it belongs with more powerful material, reminiscent of something like "Streetcar."

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.