Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: ODYSSEY [Tribeca Film Festival - New York, New York]

Tom Hanks is always good in creating an essence of documentaries with a cinematic sense of scale. This one is no different and retraces the race to the moon with a focus on Jim Lovell who eventually was known for getting Apollo 13 back to the Earth. The film "Odyssey" [Spotlight Documentary] uses only archive and presents a good perspective using some footage that hasn’t been seen before but a lot of it has been seen (including the beautiful 70mm that was in the film "Apollo 11"). Director Avi Belkin creates a intense and cool vision into these times. It is always great to see perspectives on this era though much of it has been seen and heard before. The doc seems to focus on the psychological perspective and let down of Lovell of not getting to step on the moon by using his own words.

Some images are jarring. The explosion of Apollo 1 with the three men inside is pretty hard hitting where you can see the capsule door buckle and the charred outlines of the spacesuits. While this reviewer might have seen it before, it still feels just as jarring. The film pushes a little bit more into the Soviet race to the moon and while they talk of a Luna crash on the same day as Apollo 11 one wishes there was some actual footage more from the other side. The film pretty much ends after the set back of Apollo 13 though the Apollo program did return to the surface of the moon after that. The credits briefly speaks of what is coming but not with any concrete elements and only in passing. “Odyssey” is fun to watch for space aficionados but it also covers a lot of space that has been seen before. B

By Tim Wassberg