This Right Stuff is Out of this World!

Rating: 9/10 (16 October 2018)

There can hardly have been a more dramatic adventure since the Age of Exploration than the 1960s U.S. mission to send 'a Man to the Moon'. Neil Armstrong was that first man, and the story of his preparations for this venture and subsequent success are told here to great effect.
This movie is both exciting and poignant, weaving together the astronauts' professional and personal lives, revealing the enormous mental, physical and emotional pressures and tensions exerted not just on Armstrong and his colleagues, but also their families; the ever-present risk of death hangs over the mission as the astronauts prepare and compete to be the First Man.
A story like this hardly needs dramatisation - it is itself amazing - and the understated approach adopted by Damien Chazelle works very effectively. Although in danger of lapsing into sentimentality now and then, generally the movie avoids the schmaltz traps. This makes the emotional impact of the story all the more powerful, epitomised by the way the ending has been treated.
The performances are generally good, though perhaps not outstanding, and the cinematography and FX are quite brilliant. CGI excesses and bogus sci-fi scenarios have been avoided, putting this film in a league well above, for example, The Martian.
At 2hrs 21mins, this is a lengthy film. But I found it so engaging - you train with the astronauts, travel with them, land on the Moon with them, and feel every rattle and groan along the way - that it did not feel excessively long. And in its portrayal of the massive forces required to carry humans beyond the grip of Earth's gravity, and of the phenomenal courage of those space pioneers who subjected themselves to those forces, it has done justice to the magnitude of their achievement.
Not to be missed!
(Viewed at Odeon, Warrington, U.K. 15 October 2018)