Apollo 13

Drama, Adventure, History

Tom Hanks	Jim Lovell
Bill Paxton	Fred Haise
Kevin Bacon	Jack Swigert
Gary Sinise	Ken Mattingly
Ed Harris	Gene Kranz
Kathleen Quinlan	Marilyn Lovell
Emily Ann Lloyd	Susan Lovell
Max Elliott Slade	Jay Lovell
Miko Hughes	Jeffrey Lovell
Mary Kate Schellhardt	Barbara Lovell

Director	Ron Howard
Producer	Brian Grazer
Writer	William Broyles, Jr.; Al Reinert
Cinematography	Dean Cundey
Musician	James Horner

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 film-making 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