Failure is not an option

Rating: Null/10 (24 November 2002)

Since so many NASA insiders seem pleased with "Apollo 13," including astronaut Jim Lovell, I assume the story is fairly true to what actually happened. There was carping over some over-dramatized aspects and use of poetic license, but it's difficult to avoid criticism of this sort if the goal is an entertaining recreation of an historical event and not a documentary. (Ron Howard and company suffered harsher reaction to "A Beautiful Mind" for essentially the same approach.) As far as I'm concerned, the movie is a rivetting one, a triumph of the human spirit against fearsome odds, against the lethal and unforgiving expanse of outer space. The actors did a creditable job, in particular Tom Hanks as Lovell and Ed Harris as mission controller Gene Kranz. The computer graphics are spectacular. A footnote: "Apollo 13" is the first movie to use real weightlessness or zero g (via the Vomit Comet).