APOLLO 13
A film review by Eric Grossman
Copyright 1995 LOS ANGELES INDEPENDENT
APOLLO 13 is a movie that tries very hard. It strives with great fervor to remind us of the grandeur of the space program and of the patriotism that accompanied it. It tries desperately to make us sweat and bite our nails as we wait to see what happens to its heroic characters. But for all of its good intentions, APOLLO 13 is much like the mission it depicts, it is a successful failure. Director Ron Howard (PARENTHOOD, BACKDRAFT) and his ensemble cast lead by Tom Hanks but which also includes Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise and Ed Harris, have made a number of both good and bad choices and the result is a film that reaches for greatness but must settle for just being good.
Based on the book LOST MOON by Apollo 13 mission commander Jim Lovell and co-writer Jeffrey Kluger, APOLLO 13 tells the story of NASA's near tragic mission to the moon. A malfunction that occurred enroute left Lovell and his fellow crew members Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) and Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) with very little chance of survival. The astronauts and the mission control staff headed by Gene Kranz (Ed Harris) had to overcome one horrific event after another in the face of overwhelming odds.
The story of APOLLO 13 is so miraculous that perhaps no movie can do it justice, although Howard and his crew look like they gave it their best shot. They even went through the trouble of building sets and shooting scenes in NASA's KC-135, an aircraft that flies in a parabolic trajectory to create weightlessness for up to 25 seconds. The lunar and command module sets as well as the mission control room created by Michael Corenblith look like the real things and Dean Cundey's cinematography combined with Howard's direction gives the audience a real sense of being trapped inside with the astronauts.
Hanks plays his part with a lot of enthusiasm and we like his character because of his persona; we want to see him live. However, Hanks, like his co-stars Paxton and Bacon, never seems convincing as an astronaut. People in the military, especially pilots have a particular bearing that none of these capable actors seemed to have hit upon. Only Gary Sinise, who plays Ken Mattingly, the mission pilot who was supposed to go with Lovell and Haise but was replaced at the last minute because of a possible case of the measles, is able to find that particular presence.
Ed Harris does a fine job portraying Gene Kranz but seeing him begs a comparison to the THE RIGHT STUFF, (Ed Harris played John Glenn perfectly) a film that is everything APOLLO 13 wants to be and a whole lot more. Kathleen Quinlan overacts in her role as Marilyn Lovell. Her character is a person you heart has to go out to but it doesn't help when screenwriters William Broyles, Jr. and Al Reinert give her lines such as when she says in a quivering voice, "you can discuss that with my husband when he comes back on Friday."
Other problems with the film include Digital Domain's computer generated shots of the spaceship zooming through space like it was something out of STAR WARS and James Horner's music, where he once again cannibalizes parts of his old scores almost verbatim and tries to pass it off as something new.
While it may not have been all that it could of, APOLLO 13 still manages to gives us some of the wonder of one of mankind's greatest achievements. Howard and Hanks felt strongly about the story they were telling and that passion is what saves APOLLO 13 from near disaster.
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