Apollo 13

As the men in the ship and the command center scramble to solve one potentially fatal problem after another, the power of the story emerges from inside the drift of the movie. Apollo 13 becomes a tribute to the scientific achievements of the human race.

For Apollo 13, the 1970 space mission, everything went wrong. But for Apollo 13, the movie, everything goes right. Director Ron Howard, who has a history of blowing hot and cold, is so far into his hot mode in this movie that he's dang near on fire.

It's a historical account -- but as thrilling and upbeat a tale as any fiction writer could hope to tell.

Vietnam -- or, more precisely, its absence -- haunts Apollo 13, along with the civil-rights movement and women's liberation. In fact, the entire country has gone MIA, in its place a land shaped more along the lines of Mayberry, RFD.

The space shots are dazzling, providing a thrilling journey into the cosmos. Even more impressive is the way the movie manages to be sincere about such oft-maligned notions as patriotism and heroism without becoming Hallmark-card cloying.

Apollo 13 might not be as faceted as The Right Stuff, or as interested in demythification, or even as interested in asking hard questions. But it believes in its heroics, and you'll believe in them, too.

Director Ron Howard, who has built a career on easygoing, reassuring movies from Night Shift to The Paper, finally achieves true drama.

A filmmaker devoted to authenticity meets a project that doesn't need to be rewritten to be enthralling. When those twin lightning bolts of preparation and opportunity collide, the result is magnificent... The result is a film like [Apollo 13].

It's about time gone by, it's about ambitions we no longer have, it's about values we don't seem to value, and it's about heroes who are ordinary men. The best parts of this very human epic celebrate all that was good about America.

It's unbeatable material, but Howard, his writers, and his superb cast -- there's not a clunker among them -- achieve something really remarkable with it. They assiduously maintain the integrity of the true story without ever getting bogged down.