Good movie

Rating: 7/10 (19 July 2004)

First off  I have to confess I am an avowed space junkie and this tends to raise the bar in terms of my expectations of this movie, being familiar with the true life events that form the background of this movie.	In summary, the movie surrounds the near-disaster which surrounded NASA's Ill-fated 3rd Mission to the moon. After two landings on the moon the missions had become almost commonplace and public interest in the space program was beginning to wane. This changed at 03:06 UT on 14 April 1970 when a malfunction in a heating coil caused an oxygen tank to explode, severely damaging the service module. The damage was so extensive that it forced the abandonment of the moon-landing and the severely compromised the ability of Astronauts Cpt James Lovell, John L Swigert and Fred Haise jnr to return home, a task they were able to accomplish only by jury-rigging their available equipment under the direction of Houston and suffering cold temperatures before they were able to successfully renter the Earths atmosphere in their spacecraft.
Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton and Kevin Bacon are eerily convincing as the astronauts and excellently manage to convey the tension of being in mortal danger in a malfunctioning tin can a quarter of a million miles from home, facing not only the bitter disappointment at not completing the mission of landing on the moon but the prospect of losing their lives in such an inhospitable and lonely environment. Of course nobody except the original astronauts knows what was going through their minds but Hanks et al allow the audience to appreciate the state of disciplined tension and terror that the voyagers were subjected to.
Other performances worthy of note include a determined and gritty portrayal of Charismatic and forceful Nasa Flight Director Gene Kranz by Ed Harris.
The film is well directed and the pace does not lack, despite the difficulty of portraying events in a tense fashion in a space not much larger than a large caravan, and the long periods of inactivity that form a large part of manned space flight.
Summary : An excellent `true life' movie, successful in portraying events both in space and the reaction of those left on the ground.
Rating : 90%