I think I might be the last human being to have seen this movie. Just in case I'm not, it's based on the real incident involving three astronauts during the Apollo 13 attempted moon landing in April, 1969.Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), Fred Haise (Bill Paxton), and Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise) are told that they will be crewing the 13th Apollo mission. From the beginning, things go wrong. The flight plans are moved up, they have problems in training; just little glitches all over the place. At the last minute, Ken is told he has the measles and is pulled. The back-up guy is Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon), a good pilot but not the one they've been training with. Still, the launch goes according to plan and the astronauts head for the moon. Of course, as soon as they relax everything goes wrong. A routine oxygen circulation causes a faulty part in the tank to explode, leaking their oxygen into space. They're forced to use the Lunar Module as basically a life raft and shut down all extraneous equipment. Ground Control, led by Gene Kranz (Ed Harris) has to scramble to find ways to keep the three of them alive and bring them back to Earth safely.
See, stuff like this is the #1 reason I will never go into space. If the Earth was about to be destroyed a la Knowing, I would have to seriously consider staying behind rather than getting on a freaking Space Shuttle. I would eventually do it, because I have an extremely strong self-preservation instinct, but it would give me pause.
That being said, this is still a really good movie. It seems accurate in terms of how tense a situation it must have been and how hard for the family members, feeling so helpless. For that reason, it gets a little hard to watch sometimes because I hate feelings but I'm sure you normal people will be just fine.
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