Underrated movie of an incredible event

Rating: 9/10 (17 January 2016)

I think because I was alive during the Apollo 13 flight and remember as a young teen how captive the world was as the damaged ship made its flight back was watched and how I saw the world, our nation, my neighbors, my friends all respond and the intensity which caused my initial interest. But in watching the movie, realizing that these men went to the moon using technology less sophisticated than what is in my smart phone and that there was only 1 mission where something went wrong was miraculous. Plus the bravery history shines on them as we now can compare how little we knew to the achievement, and that it was will to beat the soviets that drove the nation to willingly pay to risk these lives to make a trip to the moon that made the movie have an impact on my life as an adult. It was the drive of a nation to prove that we where technologically superior to our enemies that drove this to be such a high priority. The fact that it resulted in tremendous growth in high technology as the tax payers willingly backed this effort which drove technological innovation and breakthroughs for years as we went from WWII technology to the information age. To bad our government doesn't invest in our economy that way now instead of taxing the middle class to strip them of medical benefits to fund benefits for the poor. This movie and the comparison of where our nation was vs. is makes this an incredibly emotional movie for me. I wish those who were younger (and not foolish enough to believe these accomplishments were not real; tainting a great period of investing in our technological future) would look at it and learn from it and what this nation is capable of when its population is working and leadership strong with some true vision can accomplish.
I think this was a well made movie and Ron Howard did a great job of capturing the important aspects of the events around this mission. Living through the real event and "holding our collective breath" for all those days until we saw the parachutes open upon re-entry (an event we watched in the gym at school) and the celebration that nobody died helped to make even more real the true level of danger those men faced and not the version communicated through the press until after it was over. Things that would be lost if you weren't alive at the time, but part of what makes for an excellent movie of an incredible event in our countries history.