A very poor effort. Stunningly incompetent.

Rating: 3/10 (23 August 2019)

The film neither captures none of the following 1) the man himself 2) his life as it happened 3) the nature of space flight 4) the actual drama of the events that he was a part of 5) the character of Jan Armstrong, although it was best at this latter thing.
1) The character played in this film by Ryan Gosling is, as far as I can tell, nothing whatsoever like the actual Armstrong, who above all was known for his intelligence and dry sense of humor. Gosling's performance is dull and humorless.
2) The events depicted are correct in gross details, but absolutely botched in terms of fine ones. By dressing up the proceedings with imaginary shaking and unheard sounds, all the director does is demonstrate how little he understands either the events themselves or the nature of space flight in general. The film opens with a scene in the X-15 that has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual event which inspired it. The depiction of the emergency experienced on Gemini 8 is plain stupid, and by being stupid, destroys the real drama of the event and obscures the actual emergency, which was very real. I will not even discuss the lunar mission. By this point in the film, I was finished with it.
3) The film gets absolutely nothing right regarding either the details of space flight as revealed in actual films and recorded transcripts, or indeed even as a half-assed representation of the reality of being in orbit. To tell the truth, the early Buck Rogers films are better than this turkey.
4) By being so stunningly incompetent regarding details, the film finds it impossible to get even close to even the broad outline of life as an astronaut in the mid 1960s during the height of the space race. The obsessive use of handheld cameras makes this completely idiotic anhistorical approach even worse.
5) Jan Armstrong was, like Neil, a witty, perceptive person with a naturally sunny disposition. In the film, she is played as a frowning, obsessively fretting scold. It is a terrible disservice to the real woman. Nevertheless, her performance has hints of the real person.
I could list any number of other defects. NASA was not just Neil Armstrong, and above all functioned as a team with shallow management layers. That is completely missing in this film, as if it had never existed. The many interesting characters and personalities with whom Armstrong interaced are either entirely missing, or cardboard cutouts.
The technical realization in the film is also embarassingly affected an amateurish. That's enough said about that. It's just as well.
A bad film.