Apollo 13 (Widescreen 2-Disc Anniversary Edition) - Anniversary Edition (Widescreen)

Tom Hanks
Bill Paxton
Kevin Bacon
Gary Sinise
Ed Harris
Kathleen Quinlan

Director	Ron Howard
Producer	Brian Grazer
Writer	Al Reinert; William Broyles, Jr.

Relying primarily on actual footage shot by NASA and by news organizations, this video documents the drama of the aborted Apollo 13 mission, in which three astronauts came close to losing their lives in space. The actual recording of commander Jim Lovell telling Houston about the "problem" made famous in the Hollywood version of Apollo 13 is presented, and the scenes showing distressed engineers in the actual control room in Houston are in some ways much more dramatic than anything seen on the big screen. This is, after all, reality, with real people scrambling under intense pressure to save real lives. Besides the footage inside mission control, the video also showcases invaluable flight footage shot by the astronauts aboard the crippled spaceship. This video takes an essentially chronological approach, but the technique of using the crew's postflight news conference to serve as narration, while it is at first confusing, serves a useful purpose. This is a no-frills production, but the excitement as NASA engineers mobilize and the whole world watches the news about the stricken spaceship is so gripping that any flourishes would only seem to get in the way. --Robert J. McNamara