Thoughtful Screenplay, Stellar Performances!

Rating: Null/10 (21 May 2017)

"Hidden Figures" tells the story of three courageous African-American women who were pioneers in their respective fields in the early years of NASA. The screenplay was outstanding, and the performances were uniformly excellent.
The film juggles the lives of three remarkable women. Dorothy Vaughn became the first African-American female supervisor at NASA in her work in computer programming. Mary Jackson fought the legal system in Virginia in order to register for night classes in order to improve her chances to become and engineer. And the film's primary focus is on Catherine G. Johnson, a brilliant student of mathematics, who was instrumental in calculating the data for the earliest American space launches.
The biggest historical drama depicted by the film is the launch of the Friendship 7 mission, described as one of the turning points in the space race with Colonel John Glenn returned safely to earth. Katherine Johnson worked behind the scenes, crossing the color barrier in one of the great intellects at NASA. At one point in the film, Johnson thinks outside of the box when she goes to the ancient calculations of Euler's Method, stunning her colleagues with a set of accurate numerical results. The hidden figures of mathematics emerge in the film, just as the three women come into their own as hidden figures in the early period of civil rights.
The film balances the space saga with the challenges of the three women faced in the era of Jim Crow. Much time is devoted to the daily humiliation of segregated restrooms, drinking fountains, and even coffee pots within the NASA organization. Kevin Costner is good as the crusty project manager, who recognizes the genius of Katherine Jackson. Kirsten Dunst plays the callous supervisor of the women, who finally comes round to supporting the promotion of Dorothy Vaughn.
The period style of the early 1960s was faithfully created by the filmmakers. Documentary footage of the early NASA missions helped to bring the hidden figures out of the background and place them in an era of ferment of change in American history.