An excellent rendering and spotlight on an important part of history

Rating: 9/10 (29 December 2017)

Hidden Figures is an an excellent rendering and spotlight on a piece of the NASA space program which was not formerly broad knowledge. The fact that these African-American women played such a critical role in shaping the entire space program and getting people into space, and to the moon, is finally a matter of acknowledged history. The film does a very good job of presenting the context and ambient feel of the times, as NASA is racing to get ahead of the curve before the Russians dominate space, while at the same time, the civil rights movement to eliminate racial discrimination in America is also reaching epic proportions. There is a nice balance of technology and ethnicity presented, and one also feels not only the passion of these women to succeed in both a man's world and a racially discriminate one, but the passion to rise above the black-white threshold imposed by an ignorant and prejudicial culture. All performers did a fine job of presenting realistic characters and because the film is based on reality, and real people, it leaves one with a sense of inspiration about the courage and drive of these principled and under-acknowledged women.