A failed attempt to tell an intimate tale in the context of a great adventure

Rating: 5/10 (28 October 2018)

This movie about the most famous of astronauts does a great job portraying him as a human being, but is nearly ruined by the awful job presenting the details of his profession, details that have been seen so accurately presented in other movies, for decades. Anyone even slightly familiar with spaceflight will be shocked by the movie's space vehicles. They aren't the pristine machines of Apollo 13, nor the stylized craft from The Right Stuff. They are worn and grimy and they creak and squeak alarmingly. The paint is peeling from the White Room ceiling...there are streaks on the cockpit windows...no one uses a checklist, they just hop in and go. And every flight Armstrong takes is presented as a white-knuckled, seconds-from-disaster endeavor. And it was dangerous, certainly, but it wasn't all terror and being thrown around the cockpit - it's hyped up film-making at its worst by people who apparently didn't know or care about the details. As such, it's the yang to films like Apollo 13 or the HBO series From the Earth to the Moon.
Ryan Gosling does a good job portraying Neil Armstrong as the stoic, occasionally icy professional who tries - and often fails - to balance his most risky profession with being a father and husband. Claire Foy is wonderful as Armstrong's wife Jan. Jason Clarke plays Armstrong's neighbor and fellow astronaut Ed White, trying to break through Neil's shell before dying himself in the Apollo 1 fire (which is an intense scene but not at all gruesome, much to my relief.)
At 2:20, this little-film-within-a-big film could have benefited from lots of trimming (endless scenes of astronauts getting slammed around during launch get old quickly.) A noble effort, but not a film I'll remember or revisit, especially when I can yank a copy of Apollo 13 off the shelf.