Friday, December 25, 2020

Apollo 13 (1995)

One of the greatest adventures based on true events, but when you are depicting events this epic it is surely hard to go wrong. Actually it probably is pretty easy to mess it up but rest assured this does not happen with Apollo 13, this film smashes it.

Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) is finally heading to the moon having only flown around it on an earlier Apollo mission. There are some last minute snags though due to medical issues and Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise) has to give up his seat to Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon). Still nothing else will go wrong now?

Unfortunately something does, an explosion aboard Apollo 13 cripples the mission and puts the lives of the three astronauts (including Bill Paxton) in dire peril. Mission Control headed by Gene Kranz (Ed Harris) and with the help of Mattingly must somehow find a way to bring the crew home, pushing the remaining hardware to the limit and using it in ways it was never intended.

The film is a masterpiece. The technical details and the human story perfectly balanced. The performances are all spot on. An iconic film for iconic events.