# October Sky (1999)

### reviewed by
Michael Redman

    Rocket Boys Look To The Stars

    October Sky
    A Film Review By Michael Redman
    Copyright 1999 By Michael Redman

    ***1/2 (Out of ****)

Denial is not just a river in Egypt -- sometimes it's the key to success. Although current wisdom says that living in that body of water is a bad idea, at times you have to look reality square in the face and ignore it. Of course most of the time, you'll probably fail, but every once and a while, a miracle occurs.

Seventeen year-old Homer Hickam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is looking for that miracle. Growing up in the West Virginia coal mining town of Coalwood in 1957, his future is seemingly carved in carbon. The only way for boys to escape their coal dust covered fate is a football scholarship and Homer is no jock. The most he can hope for is to follow in his father's footsteps as mine superintendent.

Then the Soviet Union launched the tiny Sputnik. Those two or three of who are still alive and have memories of that day can recall the buzz. The world realized that things had changed forever. Mankind was no longer imprisoned on the ground.

Homer's eyes are filled with stars as he stares into the night sky watching the satellite zoom across the cosmos. He wants to build rockets. And he wants to escape Coalwood.

Getting ahead in the tiny company town is a tough job. His father discourages him. The high school principal doesn't think it's a good idea, "Our job is to give these kids an education, not false hopes." Like many educators, he wants to prepare Homer to fit in as a good worker.

The junior rocket scientist has one adult ally. His teacher, Miss Riley (played convincingly albeit low-key by Laura Dern) encourages him to enter the local science fair. If somehow he were to win the national competition, he'd have a ticket to college.

Homer crosses a well-defined high school cultural barrier and talks local nerd Quentin (Chris Owen) into helping him. Rounding up his other buddies, Roy Lee (William Lee Scott) and O'Dell (Chad Lindberg), he starts gathering supplies.

Mix teenage boys with explosive chemicals and you can imagine the results. Things blow up right and left. Rockets crash time after time. But slowly the boys refine their project. Their friendship is heartfelt and reminiscent of "Stand By Me".

Homer's desire to thwart his destiny is illustrated vividly when he gazes longingly up to the sky as he descends into the depths of the earth in a mining elevator. His future lies either buried under tons of dirt or in the stars.

His relationship with his father, John (Chris Cooper from "Lone Star" and "Matewan") is a complex one. John disapproves of Homer's pie-in-the-sky dreams. At the same time he's angry because Homer thinks he can be better than his father, he is reluctantly proud of his son's accomplishments. Gyllenhaal's scenes with Cooper are realistic in a way that any male with a father can relate to.

Some of the other relationships aren't quite as realized. Homer's girlfriend problems are a very minor part of the story and only serve to take up time. The situation seems to be included only to fulfill the obligatory romance portion of cinematic formulas.

A couple other sub-plots also serve to slow the film down a bit. A forest fire and Miss Riley's illness, while presumably historically accurate, feel extraneous.

Based on a true story, the film is a vision of real people. It would have been easy to present the townies as ignorant hillbillies, but instead, thankfully, we are shown men and women trapped by their circumstances. Their hopes are defined by the company.

Surprisingly the down-to-earth tale is directed by Joe Johnston, responsible for the effects-driven "Jumanji" and "Honey I Shrunk The Kids". Johnson shows a skill for presenting a touching movie that was missing in his previous films.

Homer is told repeatedly that he can't succeed. Fortunately for him, he decides to do it anyway. Occasionally we have to turn a blind eye to the facts and jump off the proverbial cliff. Otherwise we'd never fly.

(Michael Redman didn't start writing this column when Sputnik was launched, but he did begin looking up. Email locations of promising cliffs to Redman@indepen.com.)

[This appeared in the 2/25/99 "Bloomington Independent", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be contacted at Redman@indepen.com.] -- mailto:redman@indepen.com This week's film review: http://www.indepen.com/ Film reviews archive: http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Michael%20Redman Y2K articles: http://www.indepen.com/

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