True Events

Rating: 7/10 (17 June 2017)

In the opening scene a turquoise 57 Chevy 4 door is driving down a highway and a caption appears on the screen showing "Hampton, Virginia 1961". Next scene shows the car broke down and Dorothy slides out and says, "just as I figured, the starter is bad". They hear a siren and a cop car pulls up. It is a state trooper driving a 1964 Ford. I am sure lots of people don't know car years and models apart but that cop car was strike one.
He asks them if they need help and Dorothy says I think we have it under control. So she reaches backhand and without looking under the hood with a screw driver and sparks fly. The engine comes to life with the sound of a perfect V8 muscle car. The 57 Chevy has a visible 6 cylinder motor.
The entire premise is wrong because a running car does not stop running because of a bad starter. You can short the solenoid and starter screws to crank the engine from under the hood if the starter is not bad, but must lean and reach low because the starter is attached to bottom of the engine block and bell housing of transmission.
The story of this film is important as far as the telling of how bad segregation was. It may have tried to tell how hard it was for women in general to find technical or management work. Even though affirmative action had barely began in 1961, Dorothy could threaten to strike with 30 women because she was not promoted/titled supervisor. But look how long it took her to get the bathroom situation changed. I believe the women were good at math but just a bit too much super heroics.
There are other places in the movie as well with wrong cars. The movie ends with John Glenn's first US orbit around the earth in Feb. 1962. In another scene Kathrine and Levi are going on a date. Levi is driving a turquoise 1964 Mercury Comet convertible.
This film was a big financial success from the $25 million budget to the almost $170 million as of June 2017 from its release date of Dec. 2016. It seems to me that if you want to tell a story about smart women (or anyone) who had to overcome hardships and that are supposed to be based on true events, the technical director should do better research. The writer of the book may have gotten the starter part wrong because of hand me down stories. I rated it a 7/10 for the multiple technical errors.