Apollo 13

Universal Pictures | Release Date: June 30, 1995

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

77	METASCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 22 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

100

Staff [Not Credited]

"The Right Stuff" will endure as the more ambitious movie, but this book-faithful, 2-hour team effort shrewdly keeps its eye on the ball. Read full review

100

James Berardinelli

Perhaps the most impressive feat of this film is sustaining white-knuckle tension even though the chain of events is well-known. Read full review

100

Roger Ebert

Ron Howard's film of this mission is directed with a single-mindedness and attention to detail that makes it riveting. Read full review

100

Elvis Mitchell

You can know every glitch that made this such a dangerous mission, and Apollo 13 will still have you by the throat. [30 June 1995]

100

Richard Corliss

The result is that rare Hollywood achievement, an adventure of the intelligent spirit. From lift-off to splashdown, Apollo 13 gives one hell of a ride. [3 July 1995]

100

Barbara Shulgasser

With no frills and no commentary, Howard and company have made the kind of absorbing thriller we have in mind when we wistfully sigh, "They don't make movies like they used to." Read full review

100

Michael Wilmington

It's a nail-biter and knuckle whitener of the first rank: a super real life techno thriller that reduces the fantasies of Tom Clancy and his clones to ground zero.

Jack Kroll

By sticking resolutely to the facts of the most amazing rescue mission of all time, the movie builds tremendous suspense, even though most people will know how it came out. Read full review

Peter Travers

Howard lays off the manipulation to tell the true story of the near-fatal 1970 Apollo 13 mission in painstaking and lively detail. It's easily Howard's best film. Read full review

Rita Kempley

Apollo 13 is humanized by Hanks's reassuring portrait in courage, by Harris's nicotine-stained fingers and Quinlan's lacquered French twist. Read full review

Rick Groen

The direction may not be flashy, but it is controlled and confident; the frames unfold with a no-nonsense, nuts-and-bolts realism that, in this era of laser-blazing Batplanes, seems downright welcome. Read full review

Terrence Rafferty

The film, despite its raggedness, is stirring. In the end, this failed mission seems like the most impressive achievement of the entire space program: a triumph not of planning but of inspired improvisation. Read full review

Marc Savlov

It's a riveting, nail-biting, two-buckets-of-popcorn return to form for Howard. Read full review

Owen Gleiberman

Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, and Kevin Bacon try to get inside the skins of these space-age pilot jocks, but the roles, as written, don't give them enough to work with. Read full review

Todd McCarthy

It's exceedingly linear structure, while unavoidable, renders it rather methodical and shallow in characterization. Read full review

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

Curiously empty and instantly forgettable. Read full review

Joe Brown

The lean and efficient screenplay, based on the book "Lost Moon," by Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger, is full of the terse poetry and dry humor of people in crisis. Read full review

Kenneth Turan

Self-conscious about its heroism with portrayals that lean toward the glib and the professionally uplifting, the film milks our sympathies too readily to be emotionally convincing. Read full review

Jonathan Rosenbaum

This meticulous but ultimately rather pedestrian drama gradually won me over as a minor if watchable example of the "victory through defeat" brand of military heroism that John Ford specialized in. Read full review

Edward Guthmann

I just wish that "Apollo 13" worked better as a movie, and that Howard's threshold for corn, mush and twinkly sentiment weren't so darn wide. Read full review

David Sterritt

Howard spins the story with enough gusto and gumption to make it reasonably entertaining. Read full review

Stanley Kauffmann

And as film, Apollo 13 is dull… Partly it's because there are no characters, no room for any substantive character development… Apollo 13 is staffed with human puppets. [31 July 1995]