Apollo 13 (1995)

: Hot Potato

Directed by: Ron Howard
Starring: Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris

OMG! Try to imagine being in a damaged space capsule, more than 200,000 miles from earth, your oxygen is running out, the carbon dioxide levels are increasing, and the electrical system is shutdown to conserve power; you don’t know if you will be able to get back. Does it give you the chills? It’s a true story! That is what Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) and Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) faced when the Apollo 13 spacecraft, three days into their flight, was nearly destroyed by an explosion, and NASA had no contingency plan. While the Apollo 13 crew remained as calm and patient as humanly possible, NASA worked, under extreme time pressure, to come up with a plan to get the astronauts home safely. Ron Howard had a vision for this film, that an honest portrayal of the event was essential, and thus the film takes very little artistic license. All of the effects had to be created from scratch (no real Apollo 13 footage is seen in the movie) and the scenes of the blast off are so real you would swear they were archival footage from NASA. They even filmed in actual zero gravity conditions! The story is true and the people are real, making it that much more compelling. None of the performances are over done, and the film doesn’t try to impress you with rapid fire special effects; no, it relies more on providing the intimate feeling of tension and fear, frustration and determination. It’s kind of like watching the pot slowly come to a boil as your potatoes occasionally rumble around; you know it’s going to come to a full boil any minute and, of course, it does.

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