When a large forest fire breaks out in the mountains of Montana, a squad of 'Smoke Jumpers', the paratroop-corps of fire-fighters in the U. S. Forest Service, is flown to the scene from their regional headquarters in Missoula, Montana. The Forest Rangers, under Cliff Mason, put out the blaze, but several of the fire-fighters are killed. Ed Miller, son of one of the dead rangers, thinks he died because Mason was a coward, and sets out to prove it.
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The movie essentially focuses on the documentary side :how the fire fighters worked in the fifties,how they often risked their lives (still do today)and how(sometimes) they were unjustly accused of cowardice .their relatives are not forgotten :Widmark's wife and Hunter's mom are present and are even together when they are waiting for their men to come back after a dangerous mission.The plot concerns a fire fighter who suffers from amnesia:he does not remember what happened during a mission in which all his men were killed:a man among them was the father of a young fire fighter who cannot forgive him because he thinks he abandoned his men to save his life.Without any flashback,we do understand the whole thing during the final mission ,much to the credit of the film.
As time travel is yet impossible, this film was not based on the book, Fire, written by George R Stewart, as claimed by another reviewer. Since that book was published February 1, 1984, 3 years after Richard Boone's death from oral cancer, it would have been impossible to have filmed this book. The film was shot in 1952, long before the book was published.The F/X are amazing for their time. There's no CGI and the flames are from burning trees and forest. It's remarkable no one was killed making this film. One wonders how much acreage was consumed during filming.At the time it wasn't known that controlled fire was a healthy part of forest growth and management. Times have changed. All the Smokey Bear campaigns preventing forest fires caused a buildup of materials on forest floors and when forest fires occurred they were hotter and too destructive for the forests to survive.The actors are better than the plot.
This film is very loosely based upon an actual event known among smokejumpers -- and the entire state of Montana -- as the Mann Gulch tragedy, in which 12 out of 15 smokejumpers were burned to death. Norman Maclean, author of "A River Runs Through It" and a resident of Missoula, Montana, home to the first smokejumpers and now the principal school for them, spent the last 13 years of his life research the event, in incredible detail, and writing an utterly fascinating book, "Young Men and Fire", which I heartily recommend. Obviously, since the book was not published until after Maclean's death in 1990, it was not the basis for the movie, but the event was. I first saw it in a fund-raising presentation in the Wilma, an old Art Deco theater in Missoula, coincidently sitting beside a student from the Smokejumper Center. His attention was rapt. The funds, BTW, were used to recover and restore the actual DC-3 that carried the Mann Gulch smokejumpers.There is an account of the presentations made at the 2004 National Smokejumpers Association reunion by the spotter (gives the "go" signal, on board the aircraft), the dispatcher, and one of the survivors from the Mann Gulch tragedy, found on the University of Montana Web site, at www2.umt.edu/comm/f04/airplanes.shtml. It's short but intense, and will give you an appreciation of what happened. Then the book . . .In electing to give this a 9, I've taken into account the technology available and the style of movie making and acting of the times. I would say the acting would rank significantly lower by today's standards. But it is well worth watching.
I would say that Red Skies of Montana is a good show, but it's better than good, it is a classic and well worth the time to watch it if you can find it. It rarely shows on T.V. anymore and I can't seem to find any rental or purchasable copy anywhere. When you watch it remember it was made back before computer enhancement so when you see it getting hot it may be faked but it's faked with fire not some digitalized fakerooney of a fire, some of the antique equipment is worth watching too if you are a Wildland Firefighter there are some that no longer exist and look like they should be brought back for use today. Especially the trailmaker thingy that scuffs the dirt and tosses it aside to help smother the fire along the line of travel, cool machine. ***** (that's as close as I can get to 5 stars).
