The dangers of space

Rating: 8/10 (4 February 2010)

Apollo 13 is possibly one of the most famous space missions in history, almost as famous as the Apollo 11 mission. But Apollo 13 was famous for nearly ending in disasters, but NASA was able to prevent it.
After the success of the Apollo 11 mission veteran astronaut Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) and his crew Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) and Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise) are assigned to the Apollo 13 mission to the moon. They train and become an effective team, but Ken is removed when his blood test shows he is inflected with measles. Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) has to replace the man 2 days before the flight. When the flight takes off everything seems find for the first three days. But then one of the oxygen tanks blow up, and their capsule starts to run out of oxygen and the moon mission is abandoned. The NASA ground control team lead by Eugene F. Kranz (Ed Harris) and the astronauts enter in a race against time to get back to end. On the way they have to uses as little electricity as possible and make sure that the carbon dioxide levels from getting too high. On Earth there is also a personal drama involving the families of the astronauts, led by Marilyn Lovell (Kathleen Quinlan), who can only watch on TV and pray that their husbands can come back to Earth safely.
Ron Howard is easily on of the biggest hit and miss director's in Hollywood. For every quality film like Frost/Nixon there is a poor film to counter act it like the Da Vinci Code. Luckily Apollo 13 is on the good side on the Ron Howard scale. I have been very critical of the films that were nominated for Oscars in 1995, the awful Braveheart winning undeserved awards, whilst The Usual Suspects, Heat, Casino, Se7en, Nixon and Twelve Monkeys were all over looked for a nomination. Apollo 13 was at least the most deserving for a nod in that year. Ron Howard direct's a fine film, having some wise directional choices. He uses some excellent special effects, has some wonderful camera, shots in real locations and uses low gravity, a good use of real news footage and after a slow build up makes a interesting and exciting film about how NASA got the astronauts back against the odds. Ron Howard also shot the film as PG, which in modern cinema normally seen as weaken a film because it doesn't make it seem adult: but this was a wise move by Howard. This story didn't require swearing or violence, giving the film a wider audience and a older-fashion feel like Casablanca or Spartacus. But despite these good aspects, the film does have a very overwhelming score which wasn't needed.
There is also a good cast to the film, Tom Hanks, who is very good in the film, Kathleen Quinlan was also very good, Ed Harris, an actor I like, Gary Sinise in one of his better performances, Bill Paxton and Kevin Bacon. This was a film that was acting for awards. In another year it would have got them.
A good film if you are interested in NASA and the space programme.