Rent Blue Sky (1994)

Weak mish-mash of romantic drama + conspiracy plot - Blue Sky review by RP

This was the last film directed by Tony Richardson, famed for his late 1950s/early 1960s stage plays and films of the British New Wave / social realism / kitchen sink genre - think 'Look Back in Anger', 'A Taste Of Honey', 'The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner', as well as 'Tom Jones' and a host of others. And here he had an good cast to work with including Tommy Lee Jones and Jessica Lange, who won an Oscar for Best Actress for her role here. But this film is very average: a mish-mash of stuff, confusing a romantic drama with a weak conspiracy plot. Tommy Lee Jones plays Tommy Lee Jones as a US Army nuclear engineer observing nuclear tests in the South Pacific and later underground tests in the Nevada desert. Jessica Lange plays his over flirtatious wife. Wife flirts with army base commander and (almost?) has an affair. Husband observes civilians exposed to radiation. Base commander sets-up husband to be committed to a mental hospital. Wife rescues him. Or something. Quite how Jessica Lange won an Oscar for this I really don't know – her acting is good but not exceptional. In fact the whole film is pretty average stuff – middle of the road American stuff with a boring story, the two threads of which go nowhere. 3/5 stars, but only because I've seen a lot worse.