A masterful telling of one of the most inspiring true stories from the US Space programme

Rating: 10/10 (11 November 2014)

I have watched Apollo 13 many times and each viewing seems as fresh, as fascinating and as gut-churning as the first.
I am old enough that I can still remember listening to the Apollo 11 moon landing on the radio, and how it seemed we held our breath for days on end during the enthralling and gut-wrenching saga of the Apollo 13 mission not very long after.
This movie recreates that intense sense of fear, awe and trepidation that burned in my young mind while the world fretted over the fate of the three astronauts in such peril.
Ron Howard directs masterfully, enabling a brilliant cast to excel at portraying the attitudes and attributes of the early generation of US astronauts and NASA personnel.
Unusually for a 'true story', Apollo 13 is remarkably correct factually and takes only the very slightest dramatic license with minor details. The representation of the spacecraft and the technical settings is incredibly accurate (I believe that the mission control sequences were actually filmed in the genuine mission control room at Houston space center.) The film would still be fascinating, entertaining, dramatic, humorous and emotional if it were merely fiction. Knowing that this superb movie retains all those qualities while being the true story of an event - that I still remember with powerful emotion - lifts it from the realm of good movies to the ranks of all-time classic masterpieces of cinema.