Hidden Figures is a great story about 3 women at NASA but falls short of the gravity of 1961

Rating: 7/10 (27 January 2017)

In the early 1960's, America was in the middle of two heated battles. At home, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led the civil movement for racial equality in a time when African Americans were forced to ride separate buses, drink from separate water fountains and just generally were considered less human. In addition to that, women were fighting for their own equal rights. On a global scale, NASA fought to keep ahead of the Soviets in the race to explore space. Hidden Figures is the story of three African American women who fought both battles.
Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) work for NASA and are part of a group of mathematical geniuses referred to as human computers since mechanical computers weren't invented yet to perform such difficult calculations. The Russians launched the first ever satellite into space followed by the first man to orbit the earth and Al Harrison (Kevin Costner) is pressured to surpass the Soviet efforts. They don't want to be outdone in the space race, they need to justify a space program that has yet to send a man to space, and they fear the Russians' access to space will allow them to spy on the United States. Desperate to succeed, Katherine is sent to the think tank of all white male human computers. She struggles to fit in and be accepted and respected, but she is determined, eventually winning them over.
On the day of the launch of John Glenn aboard the Mercury Friendship 7, the IBM super computer calculations do not match the ones the human computers had figured out and Katherine is called in to confirm the correct numbers. The information must be relayed to Glenn, but her findings are given to Al and she is shut out. Al opens the door and invites her to come witness the achievement she helped to orchestrate. Katherine was also instrumental in the Apollo 11 flight to the moon in 1969. It wasn't until 2015 that she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and until 2016 that NASA renamed the Langley Research Center in Virginia the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility. Hidden Figures is an amazing story that took entirely too long to come to light. The biggest thing the trio of African American human computer women had going for them in 1961 was that America hated the Soviets just a bit more than they held to their racism and sexism. If Katherine could find a way to beat the Russians, their biases against her skin color and gender were overlooked to defeat the enemy.
The preview showed what could be an Oscar nomination worthy performance from Taraji P. Henson in the biggest role of her long career. She has mostly done television work and voice overs with some supporting character roles along the way. Most recently, she has starred in the TV series Empire after she left the hit drama Person of Interest. She was quite comfortable in her role as the leading lady playing the timid and demure mother of 3 trying not to rock the boat at work but also the strong woman who knew when and how to speak up when necessary. Surprisingly, Henson was not nominated for her role, but Octavia Spencer was nominated for Best Supporting Actress and honestly, I feel they got those reversed.
While the racial tensions were heated in the United States, the preview showed clips that glossed over the severity of the fight for equality with walls of segregation falling around them both in and out of NASA. There was a lot of humor in the preview and my only concern was how the 2 hour and 7 minute movie would deal with the graphic nature of our countries ugly history at this time. I'm gave Hidden Figures a 3.5 Star Prediction. I am sticking with that 3.5 Star rating. I thought it was missing something and I can't quite put my finger on it. I didn't want the racial issues to be jammed down my throat, but I felt the true weight of the tension of the time wasn't adequately portrayed. We saw clips of segregated buses and schools, white and colored drinking fountains, a special colored only coffee pot for Katherine, but it still didn't quite feel as uncomfortable to a viewer as it should have. I know the main point of the movie was about their accomplishments at NASA during this particular time, but I still think they could have addressed the racial and sexist issues in such a way that it really upset an audience member, thus further emphasizing just how incredible their accomplishments were. Still, I thought it was worth the money to see it in the theatres, I'll probably watch it again, but probably won't be owning this one.
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