Better story than expected. But too slow and shaky

Rating: 6/10 (16 October 2018)

I was pleasantly surprised that this isnt an Appolo 11 version of Appolo 13 as I expected.
Instead it is a Neil Armstrong biopic encompassing his time from the early 60s till his moon mission in 69. The strength of the movie to my surprise was how interesting Armstrong's life was leading up to the mission. And what makes the movie work (to the extent in which it works) is seeing how lucky and unlucky Neil was to have survived all the roadblocks he faced to get to command the his successful historic mission. It was fascinating to see all the roadblocks he and his family faced. Neil and his family had a very effective real quality to them. The acting, sets and effects all seemed very accurate to me, although I'm hardly an astrophysicist and NASA historian.
What didn't work was the pacing. Over much of the film it is glacially slow. The film is about 2 1/4 hours long and IMO it would have been better closer to 1 3/4 hours long. For the dvd instead of an extended cut they should have an abridged up tempo cut.
The other issue is all of the camera shaking. Yes it really is that big of a problem. The director was clearly trying to illuminate the feeling of the astronauts from their perspective and how unstable much of this early NASA technology was. And I don't mind some shaking cameras from time to time for those goals. But this film far eclipsed the point where it was effective and instead it became a distraction. Many of the scenes where they weren't even in motion had the camera shaking. It doesn't have to look like a home video for me to treat characters seriously. The shaking was too much. You know the idea failed when it doesn't feel like I was experiencing things shake. Instead I was observing camera shots where the camera as/or background must have been shook. And wouldn't stop snacking no matter how I was looking at the scene or for how long. I want to be following the story, not thinking about the crew shaking the camera.