A Pretty Good Movie About a Defining Moment in Human History

Rating: 8/10 (18 October 2018)

My expectations of seeing First Man was that I was in for some heavy drama, learning not only about Neil Armstrong but about all the trials and tribulations that everyone had to go through to achieve success with the Apollo 11 mission. I did get that, and I'll talk more about that later but my favourite parts of the movie were actually the action scenes taking place during the test flights. If you get motion sickness or suffer from claustrophobia, they might be a little hard to take as they help illustrate how much danger these people were placing themselves in. There's a lot of shaky cam but it didn't detract from how impressively filmed those sequences were. I was holding my breath at several points and wincing and moving in my seat in other instances because it was so hard not to get caught up in them.
The most successful part of First Man had less to do with framing the achievement of getting to the moon or showing Neil Armstrong's perspective on the journey. The most effective part was how it showed these exemplary people as being human. We rarely get a movie that shows that being an astronaut isn't a lot of fun (Apollo 13 is the only other one I can think of off the top of my head that doesn't fall into the science fiction). The sacrifice that these men and women made are pretty incredible and, in this movie, we get a biopic that doesn't feature a generic arc that hits the same old beats. I appreciated that, and I wish more movies would approach these larger than life stories from that direction.
I talked about in the last paragraph how First Man succeeds in showing these people as heroic yet flawed people. This is great but there is a flip side to it. I respect Neil Armstrong (played here by Ryan Gosling) immensely, he achieved something few have and deserves as much credit he has gotten if not more. In this movie however, he doesn't always make for a compelling main character. He has suffered tragedy and I get that but so much of this movie is him looking sad off in the distance. We don't get to experience as much of his inner pain along with him because he internalizes it so much. I get that this may be an accurate portrayal of Neil and if so, I salute the creative team for showing that. But while I respected him, he wasn't always fun to watch or that compelling as the focus of the movie. Most of the supporting characters aren't given much screen time or character development (the exception being his wife Janet played by Claire Foy) so the movie rests on him as a character. This works in some scenes, but it causes the movie to drag pretty badly at other points.
Ryan Gosling headlines the movie as Neil Armstrong and there was a lot of hype around his performance. I like him as an actor and while I'm happy he'll get some buzz for the big awards, I don't think this was his best work. He did a solid job, but I thought this character was firmly in his wheel house and played to his strengths as an actor. I would have liked to see him stretch a little more in this but that also could just be the character. Claire Foy also did decent work in this, she gets some nice moments where we get to see how much pressure Janet is under and how she struggles to cope with the possibility that her husband might not come back. I liked Jason Clarke as Ed White, he gets the most personal scenes with Gosling and they work well together. I felt for a lot of the supporting cast, we get some amazing character actors: Kyle Chandler, Corey Stoll, Ciaran Hinds, Pablo Schreiber and Shea Wigham. They all get some time but not enough to really justify their inclusion. I especially wanted more time with Corey Stoll who was playing Buzz Aldrin, he was portrayed as a brash and confident character and I wanted a little more of his backstory.
I had heard opinions ranging from "Oscar favourite" to "overrated and boring" on First Man when I walked into the theatre. I got to see this with a friend and we walked away from the theatre shrugging our shoulders and muttering how it was pretty good. Considering the hype, it may have been a bit of a letdown but that doesn't take away from the fact its an amazing story that's captured well. This movie could have user another pass in editing however, it ran long and by the end I was getting antsy for First Man to wrap up. It doesn't always paint Neil Armstrong as a compelling protagonist at the centre of this story but you have to take the bad with the good. I don't think this will make a 2018 top ten list for me but if you're interested in seeing this, I would say you should catch it on the big screen to help get the true scope of what's being shown in this movie. I'd give this a 7.5/10 rounding up to an 8/10.