Apollo 13 (1995)
directed by Ron Howard
written by William Broyles Jr.
This is another movie I avoided for years. Except for Splash, he hadn't made a movie I really liked. Looking over what he made after Apollo 13, he hasn't made anything else I really like either (save, sort of, The Missing). I find his movies generally middling affairs at best. So, when Hallie bought it for me I was reluctant to watch it. I'm glad I did.
Apollo 13 is a good, old-fashioned adventure movie about real heroes. The crew of Apollo 13 faces near-certain death when their spaceship experiences a catastrophic system failure. The movie does a good job introducing the astronauts (Tom Hanks, Gary Sinise, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton), their families (Kathleen Quinlan in particular), and the mission control team Ed Harris and Clint Howard). It switches back and forth between them and the tension as disaster nears is intense. Even knowing the basic history and having seen the movie before, it's still a hell of a ride.
I'm not the biggest Tom Hanks fan and I definitely reject any of the stuff that went around about him being the new Jimmy Stewart. I think he's a good light comedian (Joe vs. the Volcano, 1990, dir/written John Patrick Shanley is one of my favorites) and that he's done some solid dramatic work (Castaway), but I find a lot of his work as meh as some of the movies he's done. He's starred in a lot of prestige Oscar-bait movies that don't bear up. I don't even like Saving Private Ryan (watch Band of Brothers, instead, and see a true story that isn't filled with cheap moments - Look! The same Nazi we let go is trying to kill us now). Here, he's good, very good. He's terrific playing the commander who has to keep a level head and hide his own fear to keep his two crewmen steady.
What I really love about Apollo 13 is it's about real, true-to-life, American heroes. Hanks, Paxton, and Bacon all do good work bringing to life men who had already risked their lives thousands of times as military pilots for years before launching into space. It's not as concerned with the personalities of the astronauts as The Right Stuff (1983, dir. Philip Kaufman), but it does a better job showing in great detail the technical aspects of what they did and went through.
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