In April 1970, astronaut Jim Lovell contacted mission control with the words "Houston, we've had a problem." It was a classic understatement, signalling a huge, complex problem to be solved. Lovell and his crew - Jack Swigert and Fred Haise - were bound for the Moon when an oxygen tank exploded in their craft, leaving them potentially stranded in space. It gave Nasa's scientists the most nail-biting countdown of the space-age so far and kept Americans - by then blasé about the space programme - glued to their TVs. It is the ultimate rescue story and the movie pays due tribute to the bravery of the astronauts as well as American know-how. Lovell is played by Tom Hanks, whose very ordinariness - blandness, some would say - is the essence of astronaut-man, while Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton as Swigert and Haise offer welcome contrasts, as does the superb Ed Harris as the chain-smoking mission controller. Partially filmed in genuine weightless conditions, Ron Howard's movie is a technical tour de force. It's not as good as The Right Stuff, but it's light years ahead of 1969's Marooned, which, prophetically, offered up a similar story as science fiction but was so very, very dull.

The true story of technical troubles that scuttle the Apollo 13 lunar mission in 1970, risking the lives of astronaut Jim Lovell and his crew, with the failed journey turning into a thrilling saga of heroism. Drifting more than 200,000 miles from Earth, the astronauts work furiously with the ground crew to avert tragedy.