What a ride

Rating: Null/10 (20 December 1999)

If summer blockbusters were collectively defined as a person then 1995's cache would be Victor Meldrew: Tired, irascible and beset by problems.
Batman Forever was a glossy and forgettable romp; Die Hard With A Vengeance a fuel-injected monster that turned cops and robbers into a Ben Hur style adventure. Then there was Waterworld and Judge Dredd, two sci-fi adventures which cost about the same as the Third World debt and yet delivered so little.
They were all modest successes plagued by mishaps - the whole floating set of Waterworld sunk - but there was a definite sense of Hollywood losing its way without the likes of James Cameron, Steven Spielberg or George Lucas to show them the way. Luckily for Apollo 13, Ron Howard - a Lucas protege - decided to stick to a more realistic subject matter than those caped crusaders or moist Mad Maxes.
With the help of Cameron's effects company Digital Domain and the Midas touch of Tom Hanks (as Jim Lovell), Howard brought to the big screen a gripping tale of three astronauts trying to get back to earth when all hell breaks loose on their eponymous spacecraft.
On a critical level, Apollo 13 succeeded where so many other movies failed by spending a little more time on the characters than on the derivative eye candy. It also tapped into the nostalgic hopes and fears of so many people growing up watching those fuzzy black and white news reports in the late Sixties and early Seventies.
The Apollo moonshots were ripe for Hollywood exploitation so it seems strange that no-one had attempted the programme's ill-fated adventure earlier.
If landing on the moon was part of the American dream, then this was, without doubt, the American nightmare. Watching how the crew at NASA - led by the excellent Ed Harris - solve the problem of getting the desperate astronauts back home with next to no fuel and far from compliant equipment will leave your heart in your mouth.
Although the third act was written in reality 30 years ago, Howard has you gripped throughout, partly because he went to extraordinary lengths to achieve a degree of realism for the movie.
While effects could successfully remove any wires holding up actors these days, many of the zero gravity effects were achieved by taking cast and crew up in a special aircraft and then filming certain scenes while the plane went into a zero G nose-dive.
If you're a gadgets whiz, then chances are you'll already be watching in ear shattering stereo but if not then it might be time to invest in the relevant equipment - if only for that launch scene.
As Apollo 13's engines fire and ice breaks away from the body of the craft, you'll be slack of jaw as the sound crew give you the sort of experience only usually possible by strapping your head to the space shuttle.
For that alone, it's an unmissable experience. Watch it all and you may need a good lie down.