1950年代後半。宇宙計画でソ連に遅れをとったアメリカは、マーキュリー計画を実現させるべく、急遽7人のパイロットを選出。新世界へと旅立つヒーローとして、彼らの前途は約束されてはいたが、ロケットも未完成の計画は無謀といえるものであった。その一方で、初めて音速の壁を破った伝説のテスト・パイロット=チャック・イエガーは、自らの手で大空へ挑戦し続けていた。
製作費: $27,000,000 (41億円)
興行収入: $21,500,000 (32億円)
推定収支: $-5,500,000 (-8億円)
※製作費・興行収入はTMDBのデータを参照しています。収支は(興行収入 - 製作費)で算出したFindKey独自の推定値であり、広告宣伝費や諸経費は含まれません (1ドル=150円換算)。
監督: フィリップ・カウフマン
脚本: フィリップ・カウフマン / トム・ウルフ
音楽: Bill Conti
制作: James D. Brubaker / アーウィン・ウィンクラー / Robert Chartoff
撮影監督: キャレブ・デシャネル
**Overall, it's a good movie about the start of the space race.** The space race was one of the aspects that marked the intense rivalry between the USA and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. There was the notion that space could be a battleground or a zone of influence, as colonial territories had been decades before, and that the nuclear threat made it urgent to dominate space. That's why the Mercury Program was born, responsible for the first suborbital and orbital flights carried out by the USA. Directed by Philip Kaufman, the film is very good and very well made, even if, at times, it resembles an expensive advertisement for NASA and what was done by the North Americans in the space race. It is a long film, with three hours, but that is justified by covering a large period of time and giving us a very global view of the Mercury missions. This leads me to another problem: you need to have a minimal knowledge of the program and who was part of it to be able to understand everything the film shows, because there are not many explanations and the film presumes that the audience knows what they are watching. The cast is, perhaps, one of the most important aspects of the film, since it is largely based on the development of the characters and on the way each actor worked and developed his character. And there is no doubt that we have a wide range of talented artists here where Sam Shepard, Fred Ward, Ed Harris and Dennis Quaid dominate the canvas and capture our full attention. There's no way to single out just one or two, I think each of them did the best they could with what they had at hand, and director Kaufman got the best out of them all. It's a very light film, not a dense drama full of technical aspects or complicated ideas. The film even manages to give us an idea of the political and financial management of the project, and the use that American politicians were making of it for electoral purposes. There's some room for humor, but it's not a movie that makes us laugh out loud. The most comical situation for me was the way in which an American vice president was stopped at the door of an astronaut's house by his wife. The dialogues are good, they are well written, and the visual and special effects used are convincing. This film also has good cinematography and a very atmospheric soundtrack.
