Armstrong movie review & film summary (2019)
"Armstrong," in contrast, is far more traditional, using the moon mission as a present-tense framing device it can periodically return to. The flashback material starts at the beginning, with Armstrong's childhood, then follows him on to combat duty as an Air Force pilot in Korea, then on to an impressive career as a test pilot, then finally rejoining the space program, where Armstrong suppressed deep personal trauma and made history.
The filmmaker gets a surprising number of important people from Armstrong's life on record, considering that many of them are eighty or older and have been heard from elsewhere. The most moving is his widow Janet, who tells charming stories of their courtship and early years. Harrison Ford reads personal writing by Armstrong, much of which has never been used in a film before. But his warm yet unsentimental voice—while pleasing to the ear, and evocative of so many heroic movie roles—clashes with the more ordinary voice of the real Armstrong, as heard in archival footage. This is a thorough and respectable work, but not an inspired one. With a few exceptions, it doesn't give you much that you can't get from other documentaries about Armstrong and the space program, or from reading a decent nonfiction book.
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