Red Skies of Montana

Pat plot but exciting fire-fighting
The re-emergence of this film is extremely timely, given the tragic deaths of 19 firefighters in Arizona as of July 1, 2013. The film starkly shows how dangerous these wildfires are. How they put the movie together is a wonder, particularly in an era without computer special effects. Trees are burning and exploding all over the place. You learn a great deal about fire-fighting back in the 1950s (Richard Widmark has a walky-talky that looks like a giant handheld robot) and it's in color no less. The blah actress Constance Smith is given top billing but has little to do but wish her husband (Widmark) well as he goes off to fight another fire. (She's vacuuming the bedroom when he calls to tell her.) There's a big misunderstanding by Jeffrey Hunter about Richard Widmark, but it all gets resolved at the end after everyone fights a really big fire. Richard Boone, who has always seem dour and depressing to me, turns in a really good performance here and is sympathetic to boot. Oh, by...

Timely release of a long awaited movie.
As I write this, the shock of the loss of nineteen firefighters in the major wildfires in Arizona is still an open wound on the hearts of all who consider such men and women doing this as a career as true heroes. Indeed, my DVD arrived on the day of the memorial service in Arizona for the fallen "Hotshots". Forest fires, newly coined as "Wildfires" are part of life in the American West. They will always occur, and teams of firefighters will always go into danger to extinguish them to lessen loss of life and property. And unfortunately, from time to time, some of these courageous women and men will lose the fight and their lives.
The Red Skies of Montanna was produced in 1952 and is the story of the loss of five of six members of a crew of elite "smokejumpers" working on a remote fire in the forests of Montanna, much the same as what has just happened as life imitated art. In this story, however the foreman of the crew is the only survivor, and in investigations that clear him,...

Smokejumper Saga
Great tale of life and risks of the elite forest fire fighters parachuting behind the fire line. Relevant today especially considering the recent tragedy of real life forest fire fighters losing their lives in very similar circumstances as what the movie portrays.

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