Apollo 13: Critic Reviews

Playing the tough, commanding Jim Lovell is a substantial stretch for Mr. Hanks, but as usual his seeming ingenuousness overshadows all else about the role. There's not a false move to anything he does on screen.

Blowing up some 35mm films to an image 10 times larger could magnify their plot faults and performance shortcomings. But Apollo 13, with its taut cast, script and direction, profits from the process.

A powerful story, one of the year's best films, told with great clarity and remarkable technical detail, and acted without pumped-up histrionics.

The re-release of Ron Howard's Apollo 13 in the IMAX format proves absolutely that really, really, really good things can come in enormous packages.

Maintains its suspense even though the conclusion is well known.

Apollo 13 avoids becoming propaganda, or a masturbatory industrial film for NASA, by focusing on the story's human element.

While the events of this motion picture may depict NASA's finest hour, the release of Apollo 13 represents Ron Howard's.

The special effects and many scenes of weightlessness look as good or better than in the original, while the Oscar-winning sound and James Horner's rousing score make good use of the hefty audio system.

From lift-off to splashdown, Apollo 13 gives one hell of a ride.

It's easily Howard's best film.

Thrilling, heartwarming, scary, and superb.

Truly a director for the '90s, Ron Howard has mastered the art of spinning big, old-fashioned yarns without any discernible point of view, and his movie is curiously empty and instantly forgettable.

A rousing, flag-waving paean to American skill and courage, Howard's polished film panders to its target audience perfectly.

Apollo 13 remains Howard's masterpiece... It is, quite simply, one of the finest movies ever produced.

The movie is terrific on nuts-and-bolts stuff, but nuts and bolts aren't the same as drama.

Overnight, Howard seems to have turned into a combination of the best aspects of Oliver Stone and Robert Altman.

In an age when we rely on computerized directions and GPS devices to drive to the next town, it seems an almost mythic scenario.

For a 'space movie', both the special effects and photography are surprisingly pedestrian. Where it scores is in subtly restating traditional notions of male heroism.

Well-crafted and well-acted recreation of the famous missile journey, marred by Ron Howard's white POV that disregards the broader political context

...both fair history and a edge-of-your-seat popcorn thriller, a good example of the best work of which Hollywood is capable.

If you don't remember the gripping events of April 1970 before seeing this film, you likely will remember them for a long time afterward.

... tells a gripping true story efficiently. ... And yet, it still feels too packaged, too neat, too clean.

Overrated yet nonetheless well done.

It seems strange now, a quarter of a century later, than mankind, with vastly superior technology, lacks the will to venture to the other planets or even to go back to the moon. What a world of wimps we have become!

Just like the mission itself, APOLLO 13 leaves the impression of being both a success and a failure.