Watching Apollo 13 (1995) is the longest two plus hours you will ever spend in your entire life.  I remember seeing it in the theater as a teenager and falling asleep while sitting through it.  This might not be all that surprising for your typical viewer.  Most do not find history interesting, and the fact that it features a near tragic event in the storied career of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is probably enough to make anyone sleepy just reading this sentence.  Because I was, and am, a history nerd, I was excited to get to the cinema for this turkey.  While it did quite well at the box office, from what I can tell it is not mentioned how many pillows and blankets were sold with those tickets.  The answer is probably zero as I did not have a comfortable nap as I dozed in my seat.  I could swear I was under for at least a few hours, and yet the film still had hours to go upon opening my eyes.  I stayed awake this time around, but found my attention wandering in the middle.  I am sure that, after reading this review, you will see why.

Though it is called Apollo 13, the film actually begins with a different mission and a fire that kills a space crew before it launches.  It is clunky to say so, but this is some of the most heavy-handed foreshadowing you will see in Hollywood.  The next shot is of the more successful Apollo 11 mission, the one that saw the first humans land and walk on the moon’s surface.  There are several gathered at the home of Jim (Tom Hanks) and Mary Gerlach Lovell (Kathleen Quinlan) to witness the momentous occasion.  They are excited because Jim is slated to go on a later manned mission to our closest orbiter.  In the meantime, they are at NASA headquarters in Houston, staying prepared by running simulations.  Their training pays off when they learn that those chosen to be aboard for the eponymous mission have to be replaced, thus moving Jim, Fred Haise (Bill Paxton), and Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise) up one spot.  Jim is thrilled by the opportunity, as are the rest of his mates, but immediately there are bad omens.  For one, Mary has dreams that her husband is going to die when something goes wrong with the ship.  Next, Ken, the most meticulous of their number, is exposed to measles and is grounded.  That is flight talk for being ordered off the launch.  His replacement is the womanizing Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon).  Ken does not take the news well, but Jim accedes to it because without doing so they will likely be unable to again go to the moon.  Jack is given some shaky simulator time with Fred and Jim mere days before they are supposed to blast off, and despite some issues with their tests, they are declared fit to go.  So nervous is Mary about what is going to happen that she initially opts not to join the party watching the launch, but she changes her mind at the last minute.  She is on hand to witness the Saturn V rocket slip the bonds of Earth and head towards the Moon.  If you know anything about how NASA operates, you will understand how those actually in the void seldom do anything, much less push a button, without discussing it with mission control in Houston.  As such, on their third day, as part of yet another protocol, Jack is ordered to flick a switch that will stir their oxygen cannisters.  I guess this is important.  Unfortunately, this results in a near catastrophic malfunction that sends their spacecraft tumbling along its trajectory.  With the module leaking air into space and other vital parts damaged, it quickly becomes apparent that they will not be touching down on the surface of the moon.  Instead, their primary task becomes merely surviving.  To do so, after correcting the wild spin, the first decision to be made is to whether to immediately turn around or to use the moon’s gravity to assist their return.  The latter of those options is chosen, but with conditions deteriorating, they will run out of energy and oxygen before they reach Earth’s orbit.  The solution they eventually arrive at, after some bureaucratic hand-wringing as only NASA can do, is to light their booster engine.  However, this expends a lot of precious fuel, which is something they will need when they get back to our planet.  To help alleviate this fresh problem, they reduce as much as possible the amount of electricity needed to operate their vessel.  This means they are cold.  The drop in temperature has a big effect on Fred, who has developed an infection and is having a lot of difficulty being a functioning member of the crew.  Yet another concern is the trouble NASA is having coming up with a plan for their re-entry.  This is an operation that needs power that their stricken ship does not have.  To help solve this fresh dilemma, Ken is called in to work with technicians in the simulator to see where they can draw the necessary energy for their maneuvers.  Once they come up with a process for this, Ken relays instructions to Jack, the man who took his place.  With a few punches of buttons, Jack is able to get everything ready for their re-entry into the atmosphere.  Miraculously, the command module’s heat shield holds together, and its parachutes deploy, allowing for an uneventful splash down and ocean recovery.  The proceedings conclude with Jim talking about what the rest of the crew did after this historic mission.

Movies like Apollo 13, being a story of survival against incredible odds, is one that would usually interest me greatly.  A parallel film, with nods to this one but a better made production, is The Martian (2015).  The similarities between the two are many, like both of them being about living through dangerous conditions in an inhospitable environment like space.  Yet, the former actually happened, whereas the latter is a work of fiction.  This is interesting because I enjoyed The Martian much more than Apollo 13.  They are films based on using science to navigate a crisis.  For a Catholic like myself, you would think that Apollo 13 would be more enjoyable since it is based on history, and set during a time that people at least seemed to care more about God.  For example, there is a shot of St. Pope Paul VI calling for prayer for the safe return of the astronauts.  Yet, at almost every opportunity, they downplay the role of the divine in their events.  Naysayers could look at what happens and ask why God would want anyone to experience such harrowing events.  To this I would point to something I saw on Facebook earlier today, one of those fortune cookie sayings that nonetheless reinforces the truth that growth comes from challenges.  Everything that occurs during the film could be construed as a series of fluke accidents, and that may be true.  However, they were also an opportunity for the crew to come together for survival.  They form a community of sorts.  Another saying is that God does not give us anything we cannot handle.  Even if a situation ends in costing us our lives, Faith can help ease our transition from this life to the next.  Instead, the movie would have you believe that it was mere human ingenuity that got them out of their predicament, forgetting the source of that ingeniousness.  There is an interesting response to this attitude in The Martian when Mark Watney (Matt Damon) carves up a Crucifix to use as kindling to help produce water.  This could be dismissed as blasphemous, but Mark hopes God will understand his actions.  Apollo 13 makes no reference to the hand of God on their maneuvers, which is disappointing.

With a lack of the acknowledgement of a Higher Power in Apollo 13, it turns an exercise in tolerating tedium into an even more boring endeavor.  I do not necessarily wish to demean what was, in reality, a truly heroic act on the part of Jim and his crew.  Their efforts were epic.  Otherwise, I would say there is little reason to watch this one.