Director: Philip Kaufman
Cast: Charles Frank, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, Lance Henriksen
Have I Seen It Before?: Maybe? There’s a half-remembered viewing on cable back in the day when people would watch movies on cable, but I couldn’t swear to it. I have read the book, though.
Did I like it?: In assessing the movie, I think I only have two complaints. First, I think the long runners at the beginning and the ending involving Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) were extraneous. It really delays the film from where I am sitting, and doesn’t Yeager deserve his own feature, not just the short before this true story develops?
Second, tragically, there is no way a film features synthesizer music and isn’t either made in the early 1980s, or insists on making us think it was made in the 1980s. Thankfully composer Bill Conti kept his worst 80s impulses (see some of the early Rocky sequels for more examples of how bad it could get) in check for the most part and only a few scenes date the proceedings with their production, and not their settings.
Aside from that, the film is terrific. I blanched at its three-plus hour run time, mainly because I wasn’t sure what could be shown about the Mercury 7 that couldn’t be wrapped up in a tight two hours. I may have been right about that, if I focus on my complaints about the Yeager section, but aside from that the film zips around. The film is perfectly cast, with Ed Harris particularly equating himself well as the politician (and at that point, potentially future president) in pilots clothing, John Glenn. It’s a unique balance to fill a cast with character actors who also manage to pull off a job that is almost exclusively the province of big-name movie stars: remaining charming, even when they’re acting like complete assholes.