Not overly engaging historical drama

Rating: 6/10 (11 October 2018)

'First Man' is the story of Neil Armstrong (Gosling) and how he became the first human to walk on the moon. It's amazing that after almost 50 years, this film's never been made before - but we've had 'Space Cowboys'! While largely focused on Armstrong, the film does a good job of showing how essential all the other NASA engineers and astronauts were during the 1960s to making the Apollo 11 mission a success.
The film spends almost as much time exploring Neil's relationships with his family - wife Janet (Foy) & sons Eric (Winters) and Mark (Blodgett). They certainly go through their share of tragedies and funerals, making the film quite melodramatic. It almost gets bogged down in politics in the middle too. While Gosling's OK, he comes across a quite bland and boring - possibly intentionally. I think he was going for humble, but ended up as mild.
The film's at it's best when it's focusing on space - rather than watching the rocket launch from distance, like on TV, we're stuck in the cockpit with the astronauts as they're shut in, and it's quite claustrophobic. But instead of cutting away, we experience lift-off from their point of view - all the noise, shaking and velocity. It's annoying there's often a black screen for seconds at a time, but it's realistic for space. The score's OK and you do get to spend some time on the moon. It's certainly no 'Apollo 13' or 'Gravity', but has it's moments.