The effects are suitably grand and slick and Howard does a good job communicating the silence of space.

An exciting and moving film. It's also sad, an elegy for a union of vision and can-do that seems almost prehistoric.

The underlying irony of Apollo 13 is that a lunar mission that went so disastrously wrong should now provide the basis for a film in which everything goes miraculously right.

Tense, thrilling and superbly made, Apollo 13 is likely to become one of the box office successes of the year.