Burning Blue

It is a well known fact American intelligence suffered in the post 9/11 days because we had virtually no military personnel who could understand the languages spoken by the people living in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. This was a critical chink in our armor and only existed because all the American military officers able to translate these languages into English had been fired because of the witch hunts going on in the military -- even though this was against the law -- and we, as a country, lost many battles and many human lives because we could not predict with accuracy what the enemy was doing. All the relevant translators had been hounded out of the military under these witch hunts. Some of them were gay and some were not. None of this had anything to do with being an American or serving in the Armed Forces. Yet someone's dad, brother, son, nephew or friend lies dead because of the conservative witch hunts against the "real enemy" of the nation -- gay people. Had these witch hunts been stopped, as required by law, thousands of young men in the armed forces would still be alive. But they died for someone else's political beliefs. No one was ever punished for the mass murders of American soldiers by American personnel.

This is an exceptionally beautiful film, perfectly crafted to tell an important story. While this is not at all my genre - I do not personally support the gay lifestyle for many reason BUT that is me..... The right to make personal choices for our own lives is a fundamental human freedom that I will support until my dying day. Not just support the right to choose but to support others who make different choices to mine - and I hope they do likewise with me. This film hits hard in an era where there is relentless attempts to take away the freedom to even choose what substances are injected in your own body - how outrageous is that...... The result of this fascist coercian is nothing good either then or now......

That's no indication of the sexual position preferences of the main characters, because I would have no way of knowing. This movie was so muddled and vague it wasn't even clear sex had happened until it was acknowledged in the dialog. We know the characters are in love. That's accomplished with smoldering surreptitious glances. But that's about all you can tell from this bottom-of-the-barrel script. It's really impossible to tell what's going on. It came as a surprise to learn that the action covers about eight years. One of the characters says so. I wouldn't have known otherwise. The plot is navy pilots vying for some prestigious assignment. Things go wrong. Eventually NCIS suspects planes crashed because pilots had gay feelings. No, really--that's it. The last quarter of the movie is more direct, focusing on the Don't Ask, Don't Tell idiocy. But it's pretty heavy handed. I almost expected one of the accusers to twirl a mustache, like the villain in a Dudley DoRight cartoon. I wanted to like this movie, in fact I liked the characters and the setting. But it's really only watchable if you don't care about things like continuity or logic.