Hidden Figures essentially TRUE....and entertaining!

Rating: 8/10 (22 June 2017)

At first, I thought this movie Hidden Figures was exaggerating the role of these three brilliant women.
Why would I doubt? Because we live in a time where some play fast and loose with history...but my scan of other sources indicated the movie (in the most important ways) essentially is correct.
I was told that despite the huge sizes of these 1960 era IBM computers. some electronic home sewing machines of today...have more computing power.
And...the new IBM computers were not yet trusted, so it's true...Astronaut John Glenn asked one of the soon-to-be-obsolete human "computers" (Ms. Johnson) to hand calculate his launch trajectory to "verify" the machine computer. I'm wondering at the HIGH level of math it takes to do that!!!
These 3 shrewd, smart women of color carved out positions for themselves. Young people could learn how to "manage upwards" from their techniques. All 3 worked hard, did fine work, researched and asked for new/better opportunities, and...did all the above with courtesy (most times). *****
"Hidden Figures" is a great family film for all but very little kids who might not understand it.
NOTE: There was a real Cold War going on. Despite what some of you learned in school. Stalin's spies had stolen atomic bomb technology from the US sometime in the 1940s.Read up on how dangerous Stalin was...he outdid Hitler in numbers of persons who died in his camps (called "gulags").
In the late 50s to early 1960s, Nikita Khrushchev was the next Soviet leader and had threatened that Communism would outlast Capitalism (mistranslated ...his son claims...as "we will bury you".) His shoe and fist pounding at the UN (which can be seen on YouTube) certainly did nothing to reassure the West that he was peaceful.
And later...Khrushchev would be involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nuclear warheads were in some of the US planes(and no doubt in some Soviet planes/missiles also). I knew a former fighterpilot, part of the US pilot group in the Cuban Missile Crisis, who confirmed "I had a nuclear warhead in my plane." We came within inches of Nuclear War.
So...you can better understand how the racist cop put aside his prejudice to help the black women get to their NASA jobs! The Soviet threat was real. And you can understand the ANXIETY of NASA leaders, as they sought to pull ahead of the Soviets.
The Cold Warco uld have gone into "Hot" war at any time during this era, especially if the Soviets had gotten far ahead with satellites/missile delivery systems. The communist stated goal per Khrushchev and others, was world domination.
Hidden Figures is a film suitable for home school kids from grade school on up. (There is a small scene where the three women drink alcohol...at home...but basically it's a PG film with no bedroom scenes and no violence.) **************************************************************
PS...Next, I hope someone makes a film about another Hidden Figure --- the woman who did the groundbreaking DNA photography that Crick and Watson used to "discover" DNA. The woman who got left out of the Nobel prize...that Crick and Watson collected!