Breaks my heart...

Rating: 10/10 (5 August 2003)

Just purchased the Collector's Edition DVD, and I'm somewhat ashamed of myself for a) waiting this long and b) buying it used.
This was my first time viewing the film digitally (after seeing it once in the theater and countless times on VHS) and I must say that, with the DVD format's perfect picture & sound quality, I felt like I was seeing this perfect film for the very first time!
As someone who has followed the Space Program closely all his life, I consider this to be the most accurate depiction of manned spaceflight ever committed to film, and feel it should be considered an historical document, rather than "just a movie".
It breaks my heart when I see comments from uninformed & uninspired individuals, who come out of the woodwork for the sole purpose of spitting bile on this masterpiece, inventing flaws where none exist.
I know how NASA personnel behave and communicate, and these performances were absolutely flawless. The recreation of all the hardware and locations was perfect in every detail, which had never been attempted before, nor had the concept of generating ACTUAL weightlessness inside a KC-135 flying a parabolic trajectory!
People complain that... ...the dialog was too technical, when in fact it was "dumbed down" quite a bit! If you're having trouble understanding what's being said... READ A BOOK! ...the ending was known! Ah, but the tale was not! It was a true Odyssey: "a long journey marked by many changes in fortune."
The sheer magnitude of effort pumped into this film, and the obvious love and care displayed by each and every member of the cast and crew for the subject at hand, deserves much better than the merciless apathy it's been getting here.