Apollo 13

Description

It had been less that a year since man first walked on the moon, but as far as the American public was concerned, Apollo 13 was just another "routine" space flight—until these words pierced the immense void of space: "Houston, we have a problem." Ron Howard directs Academy Award® winner Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise and Ed Harris in a riveting suspense-thriller from Imagine Entertainment. Stranded 205,000 miles from Earth in a crippled spacecraft, astronauts Jim Lovell (Hanks), Fred Haise (Paxton) and Jack Swigert (Bacon) fight a desperate battle to survive. Meanwhile, at Mission Control, astronaut Ken Mattingly (Sinise), flight director Gene Kranz (Harris) and a heroic ground crew race against time—and odds—to bring them home. It's a breathtaking adventure that tells a story of courage, faith and ingenuity that is all the more remarkable because it is true! NASA's worst nightmare turned into one of the space agency's most heroic moments in 1970, when the Apollo 13 crew was forced to hobble home in a disabled capsule after an explosion seriously damaged the moon-bound spacecraft. Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton play (respectively) astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise in director Ron Howard's intense, painstakingly authentic docudrama. The Apollo 13 crew and Houston-based mission controllers race against time and heavy odds to return the damaged spacecraft safely to Earth from a distance of 205,500 miles. Using state-of-the-art special effects and ingenious filmmaking techniques, Howard and his stellar cast and crew build nail-biting tension while maintaining close fidelity to the facts. The result is a fitting tribute to the Apollo 13 mission and one of the biggest box-office hits of 1995. --Jeff Shannon