“Houston, we have a problem.”
Forty years ago this month, on April 13, 1970, a radio transmission containing these words crackled sharply back to earth from the tiny Apollo 13 spacecraft, which was carrying three men on a quarter-million mile journey to the moon. Spoken by the spacecraft’s commander, with a deliberate calm inculcated by years of training and experience as an aviator and astronaut, these words awakened the world to a catastrophic accident which had just occurred nearly 200,000 miles from earth… an accident which literally threatened to maroon the three passengers aboard Apollo 13 in space for all eternity…
In 1995, Imagine Entertainment released Apollo 13, a wonderful movie directed by Ron Howard and starring, among others, Tom Hanks, Ed Harris, Kathleen Quinlan, and Gary Sinise. This film masterfully dramatizes those harrowing seven days in April 1970, when the citizens of planet Earth anxiously watched and waited to see if the Apollo 13 astronauts would return to earth safely, or be lost forever in the vast, barren ocean of space. Based upon James Lovell’s excellent memoir of the flight, Lost Moon, this film brilliantly recreates all of the tension, the high drama, and the heroism of that fateful week.
The story begins on the night of July 20, 1969, at the Houston, Texas home of James Lovell (played by Tom Hanks). Selected to command the upcoming Apollo 14 mission to the moon (slated for late 1970), Lovell has gathered his entire family, his crew mates Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise) and Fred Haise (Bill Paxman), and the rest of the Apollo program astronauts to watch the television broadcast of Neil Armstrong’s historic walk on the moon.
Soon afterward, Lovell, Mattingly and Haise are “bumped” forward to the Apollo 13 mission (scheduled for April 1970), after Alan Shepard is scrubbed from the flight due to an ear infection. The three astronauts begin an intense period of preparation for their upcoming lunar voyage…
…Until two days before the scheduled launch, when fate intervenes to scrub Mattingly from the flight. He has been exposed to the measles. Lovell is offered a choice: either replace Mattingly with Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon), or his whole crew will be bumped to a much later flight. Fearing that a delay might result in no future mission at all, Lovell decides to replace Mattingly with Swigert. Two more days of intense simulator training, with Swigert struggling mightily to achieve a level of proficiency equal to that of Lovell and Haise, are followed by the near picture-perfect launch of Apollo 13…at precisely 1:13 p.m. on April 11, 1970.
All goes well for the first two days of the flight…almost too well, in fact. After only two Apollo missions to the moon, America has become bored by it all. Most Americans elect not to watch the Apollo 13 launch. The television networks decide not to carry the crew’s broadcasts from space, much to the consternation of Jim Lovell’s wife, Marilyn (played by Kathleen Quinlan – Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nominee).
That all changes, however, on the second day of the mission. Moments after the crew completes its first television broadcast, Mission Control requests Swigert to “stir” the spacecraft’s oxygen tanks. Swigert obliges, setting off an electrical chain reaction which results in a huge explosion in the service module. The Apollo 13 astronauts suddenly find themselves aboard a spacecraft careening wildly out of control to a God-knows-where destination somewhere in the universe…
Abruptly, the focus of the mission changes from preparing for Lovell’s and Haise’s upcoming landing on the Fra Mauro area of the moon. Now, astronauts and mission control specialists alike must search for solutions to critical problems which they can’t even see, much less repair. How these two teams of brilliant scientists and engineers solve these problems and successfully bring Lovell, Swigert, and Haise back to earth, depite a series of staggering obstacles, form the intensely dramatic and thrilling climax to this film.
Apollo 13 is a film which provides viewers with three essential glimpses of extraordinary heroism. The first glimpse reveals, of course, the valiant efforts of the three beleaguered astronauts, their lives imperiled, to bring their spacecraft under control and return it safely to earth. The obstacles faced by these three men of uncommon valor were staggering indeed. At first, their wildly gyrating spacecraft threatened to tear itself apart. Then, systems one by one began hemorrhaging precious life-sustaining resources – heat and oxygen. Lovell, Haise, and Swigert had to confront each obstacle in turn, analyze each, and make almost instantaneous decisions on how to overcome them. Had any one of their decisions been wrong, the astronauts could have found themselves consigned for eternity to the vast silence of space.
The astronauts had to contend with intense interpersonal conflict as well. Haise’s pointing the finger of blame at Swigert, and Swigert’s exercises in self-recrimination both created major distractions for the crew, and tremendous friction within the confines of the spacecraft. Only Lovell’s calm demeanor and extraordinary leadership skills enabled the crew of Apollo 13 to overcome their personal differences.
The second glimpse of heroism may be found in the Herculean efforts of Mission Control to ensure the successful recovery of the astronauts. Led by Gene Kranz, the dour, fiercely determined (“We’ve never lost an American in space…we’re sure as hell not gonna lose one on my watch. Failure is not an option!”) Mission Control Director (played by Ed Harris in his Academy Award nominated performance), this diverse group of scientists and engineers had to analyze data coming at them from 240,000 miles away and arrive at practical solutions to overwhelming problems. From designing makeshift carbon dioxide filters, to developing electrical power conservation procedures, to calculating correct spacecraft re-entry attitude – the mission controllers’ quietly heroic deeds were an essential ingredient leading to the survival of the Apollo 13 crew.
Finally, there was the unsung heroism of the astronauts’ families. Sitting helplessly by, listening to the radio transmissions between Mission Control and the stricken spacecraft, and watching graphic news reports and analyses of their husbands’ plight on television, while at the same time being constantly scrutinized by the press, Marilyn Lovell and Mary Haise (Tracy Reiner), along with their children, were forced to simply hope and pray that their spouses would be returned to them safely. Perhaps that was the greatest form of valor of all.
The acting in Apollo 13 is uniformly superb! There is no question that the dominant performance in this movie is turned in by Ed Harris as the irascible, focused Gene Kranz. In every scene in which Harris appears, he simply towers above the other actors. His performance is stunning in its realism and accuracy. Tom Hanks brings an wonderfully easy-going, almost “aw-shucks” demeanor to Jim Lovell’s character. Bill Paxman is excellent as the quietly intense Fred Haise, and Kevin Bacon shines as the somewhat impetuous but extremely competent ladies’ man Jack Swigert. Kathleen Quinlan suffers beautifully as the superstitious Marilyn Lovell, a woman who seems to have had about enough of being an astronaut’s wife.
As with all Ron Howard/Imagine Entertainment films, the technical aspects of Apollo 13 are top-notch. Ron Howard’s direction provides scenes which are very effective in heightening the film’s overall sense of drama while realistically conveying the gravity of the crisis at hand. A couple of scenes surrounding the launch of Apollo 13 venture into the realm of the over-dramatic cliche’, and come perilously close to stretching reality to its breaking point. (In one scene, which seemed particularly melodramatic, Marilyn Lovell and Mary Haise gaze tearfully skyward, almost as if in rapt prayer, as the Saturn V rocket climbs from the launching pad. At the same time, the grounded Ken Mattingly stands like a lone sentinel in a field close to the launch site, his gold Corvette parked nearby. As he gazes skyward, he murmers, “c’mon, Baby!”) Conversely, other scenes – most notably those where the spacecraft has broken radio contact with the earth – are wonderfully realistic, sensitive, and poignant reminders of the tremendous emotional toll being wrought on all who struggled so mightily to ensure a successful resolution to this crisis – the astronauts, their families, and the men at Mission Control.
The movie’s Academy Award nominated special and visual effects are stunning even now, fifteen years after the film’s initial theatrical release. Especially impressive are the launch sequence, where the viewer is offered several very realistic perspectives of the blast-off and rocket stage separations; Apollo 13’s journey to the dark side of the moon; and the spacecraft’s meteor-like re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere.
Apollo 13 is an important movie which accurately depicts one of the most harrowing events of the 1970s. Overshadowed as it was by two events which occured at nearly the same time – the American army’s incursion into Cambodia in April 1970, and the killing of four students at Kent State University on May 4, 1970 – the actual Apollo 13 mission seems largely to have been forgotten. This superb film brings that event – which Gene Kranz called “NASA’s finest hour” – once again to the forefront, and restores the players in this real-life drama to the pantheon of American heroes.
Other Movie Reviews by Mike Powers:O Brother, Where Art Thou?
