Apollo 13 Film Review - A Greensleeves Page

In 1970, the first major crisis to affect the American space programme whilst astronauts were actually in space occured when the Apollo 13 moon mission developed a critical fault. In 1995 director Ron Howard made a film about the crisis, and the tireless struggle of the technical controllers back on Earth to bring the men home.

PLOT SPOILERS

This is my first film review. In my reviews, plot spoilers will usually be highlighted; but this film is factually based, and I assume everyone knows the outcome of Apollo 13. Please therefore be aware no warnings are given in this page.

In 1970, man had already landed on the moon, not once, but twice. Among the media a degree of complacency had developed. People had become blasé, and the networks were already losing interest in what was just another moon shot. But when astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert blasted off on 11th April 1970, mission control knew that the dangers involved in space exploration were still very real (and remain real today as evidenced by two shuttle disasters), and the courage of the astronauts involved in flying to the moon was still very great.

Computer technology in 1970 was primitive compared with 2011, and there was no way astronauts could be rescued if things went wrong. There might indeed be no way in which people back at mission control in Houston - for all their expertise - could do anything to help the men. It might come down to guesswork and makeshift solutions if things went wrong. Things did go wrong ....

This movie is the story of what mission control did to try to get the astronauts back safely, and how the astronauts coped with being stranded in outer space.

DIRECTOR - Ron Howard

WRITERS / SCREENPLAY - Jim Lovell, Jeffrey Kluger, William Broyles Jr, Al Reinert

YEAR OF RELEASE - 1995

RUNNING TIME - 140 minutes

GENRE- Drama

ACADEMY AWARDS - Mike Hill, Daniel P Hanley (Best Film Editing) / Rick Dior, Steve Pederson, Scott Millan, David MacMillan (Best Sound)

ACADEMY NOMINATIONS - Ed Harris (Best Actor in a Supporting Role) / Kathlees Quinlan (Best Actress in a Supporting Role). Also Best Art and Set Direction / Best Effects / Best Music / Best Picture / Best Adapted Screenplay

For me, the commanding character (in every sense of the words) is Ed Harris in the role of flight director Gene Kranz. Perhaps Harris was lucky - most of the best lines seem to have been given to him, but it's a first rate performance of calm authority and determination.

All the other guys in mission control seem authentic in their technical concerns and discussions, and Gary Sinise turns in a good performance as Ken Mattingly, an astronaut dropped from the mission at the last moment due to health concerns, but then brought back in an advisory capacity to help get the Apollo 13 crew back.

The families of the stranded astronauts are also well portrayed by all the actors, including the children. As for the astronauts themselves, they make an interestingly diverse threesome - professional in their actions, yet clearly under immense stress, as portrayed by Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton.

Ed Harris and Kathleen Quinlan were both nominated for Oscars in best supporting roles.

Zero gravity scenes were shot in the 'Vomit Comet', a US military plane which induces the effects of weightlessness by diving at velocity from great altitude. Each dive only lasts for 23 seconds at a time before the plane has to pull out, so the cast and crew had to work very quickly to get their shots, before falling back to the floor of the cabin with a thud when the plane pulled out of its dive. In total 509 dives were required to shoot all the necessary zero gravity sequences.

Apollo 13 Commander Jim Lovell wrote the account on which the film was based. He had originally wanted Kevin Costner to play him in the movie.

And Lovell himself appeared in the film in a very small cameo role as the captain of the USS Iwo Jima, the ship which rescues the astronauts from the ocean at the end of the movie. Tom Hanks playing the role of Jim Lovell, gets to shake the hand of the real man - a symbolic moment perhaps.

Well it shouldn't be should it? We all know the story and the outcome, so the ending shouldn't be nail-biting. It's a true story, without much action - no violence, no sex, no running about, no car chases, no beautiful scenery, not many laughs - mostly it's just dialogue. As for my personal viewpoint - when I first saw the film, I wasn't even a big fan of Tom Hanks. On the face of it, this was one movie with very little going for it.

And yet.... The crisis is as gripping as in any movie, and the ending is tense and emotional, basically because the whole movie has a ring of authenticity about it. You don't think of the people as actors, because the performances are restrained and utterly believable, and because there is a documentary-like quality to the story. The film script is arguably the best ever of its kind. And I grew to like Tom Hanks.

Many of the best scenes emphasise the frustration of dealing with a problem with which mission control cannot apply their technical wizardry. All they can do is 'make do' with what's on board the spacecraft, and get the astronauts to adapt and modify it to achieve a new purpose.

The scene which best illustrates this is one in which a pile of junk is poured on to a work surface - plastic bags, bits of piping, even a copy of the astronauts' instruction manual which they are prepared to tear apart and recycle. The purpose of this exercise was to deal with a build-up of potentially fatal carbon dioxide within the cabin of the spacecraft. This was ordinarily done by passing the cabin air through cannisters of lithium hydroxide. Unfortunately, the crisis mean't that all the cannisters in both parts of the craft - the command module and the lunar module - were required, but cannisters in one part of the craft were square in cross-section, and the piping they had to attach to to be used in the other part, was round in cross-section. The technicians literally had to find a way to fit a square peg into a round hole, and hold it all together with sticky tape!

But of course it is the final moments which make this film. Even though we all know the outcome, the tension on the ground in Houston and in the homes and workplaces of the astronauts' families and friends, involves us fully in the minutes which pass - minutes in which mission control is powerless, and everyone involved is just praying and hoping, and waiting to see if the module has successfully survived re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere; the radio-crackling re-emergence of the module and the voice of Jim Lovell, is the most moving sequence in the movie.

For me this is one of the most realistic films ever made. Everything about the performances seems entirely believeable. Whilst I am sure some dramatic license was taken with the storyline, the basics are authentic; this seems a faithful account of the drama, and a fitting tribute to the men involved in the real crisis. My verdict is that it is one of the ten best films ever made.