Hollywood re-telling at its best

Rating: 9/10 (4 January 2009)

The great thing about 'Apollo 13' is that it tells a true story essentially as it happened, one that most people over a certain age are at least somewhat familiar, a story of which everyone knows the ending, and yet makes it as fresh and exciting and even tear-jerking as if the idea had just popped out of some talented screenwriter's head. It is no small achievement that the movie takes stiff real-life dialogue and even some lame 'true' jokes and by sheer screen presence and charisma of its stars again makes all of it sparkle, not to mention the traumatic scenes in space of the crippled spacecraft as it wobbles its way back to Earth. It is fair to say 'Apollo 13' makes its story much more exciting than it seemed in real life, which somehow just doesn't seem right, but which feels like an unimportant thing to worry about while you're watching it. Part of this success I think is due to the fact that most of us really DON'T (or didn't) know the whole story of what happened on this space flight. I know I was shocked to realize just how badly the spacecraft was damaged in the initial explosion; one whole side was ripped away. Given what the astronauts and NASA had to work with at the time in terms of technology, and witnessing as we have even greater tragedies since with the space shuttle, it really is nothing less than a miracle the three men made it back to Earth safely. Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, and Kevin Bacon are all fine as the astronauts; each gets to be heroic at various points in the film though there is subtle stereotyping: Hanks as Commander Jim Lovell is level-headed, compassionate, almost too good to be true (the film is based on Lovell's book); Paxton's Fred Haise is quite ill during much of the flight and puts up a brave front but, well, he's no Lovell; and Bacon portrays Jack Swigert, who garners nearly everyone's resentment as a hotshot young pilot, a last-minute replacement for the more respected Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise). Back on the ground in Mission Control, Ed Harris is wonderful to watch as Flight Director Gene Kranz, and 'director' is a good description of his role- he orchestrates the rescue effort, cool, determined, confident. The scenes in space are quite convincing, many of them shot in weightlessness, and convey believably the crisis which faced the crew and their counterparts on Earth. I didn't realize how good a film 'Apollo 13' was until I watched it the other night for the first time in about five years. It is an uncommon example of Hollywood telling a 'true story' and getting it right.