Out of Blue movie review & film summary (2019)

Detectives arrive at the scene of a death at an astronomical observatory. The body on the floor was an astrophysicist named Jennifer Rockwell (Mamie Gummer). “One of the Rockwells?” someone asks. Yes, the daughter of a prominent family led by a former POW turned electronics magnate named Colonel Tom Rockwell (James Caan) and his wife, Miriam (Jacki Weaver). Their twin sons went into the family business, but Jennifer became a scientist who looked to the stars for answers.

“The catastrophic death of a star brings new life to the universe,” she tells a small group of students just before her death. We will hear her again, in flashbacks, describing her search for the “dark heart” that will reveal the secrets of black holes. She cautions that we are not the center of the universe, and an epigraph before the film tells us that we should not think of ourselves as living in the universe but the universe as living in us.

The detective investigating the death is Mike Hoolihan (Patricia Clarkson), a recovering alcoholic who says that she cannot remember anything about her past before she joined the police force. In case we cannot figure out that this means she is dedicated investigating the details of other people’s lives but not her own, Amis gives us a character to explain that to us. The same with the parallels between a detective following clues to solve a crime and a scientist following clues to test a theory, and the references to masks and personae, all of which are more than made clear by the film itself and then unnecessarily explained to us by its characters.

That happens a lot in this film, where what may have worked in literary prose comes across as pretentious on screen. The central concern about who shot Jennifer Rockwell is resolved pretty quickly, which means “case closed” for the police department. But Hoolihan wants to know why, and so she keeps looking. A female detective with a man’s name, who is told by another character she should look more like a woman, and takes pride in her reputation for never showing any queasiness or emotion at a crime scene suddenly starts getting dizzy. Is she investigating what happened to Jennifer or what happened to her?

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