The Right Stuff

A

Directed by Philip Kaufmann

Philip Kaufmann's under appreciated box office bomb stands as one of the most entertaining and expansive American films of 1980's and is one of the very few examples of a film that is markedly better than the book that inspired it (Oh yeah, Tom Wolfe fans...I went there). I massive failure upon its release in theaters, "The Right Stuff" just goes to prove that American filmgoers have no idea what the hell a good movie actually is.

Based loosely off of Tom Wolfe's book of the same name, "The Right Stuff" opens with badass Chuck Yeager trying to break the sound barrier which, obviously he does, even though he is hounded by a broken risk and piloting an aircraft that looks like a giant dart. Following his feat, a number of high profile test pilots begin converging on Muroc Army Air Field, attempting to break the next big piloting barrier.

At the same time, in a far away land, the evil Soviets launch the first sattelite into space. American officials are rightfully pissed and decide to kick the Space Race into full gear, sending a couple of their men down to Muroc to recruit test pilots with "The Right Stuff" for the job. The rest of the film follows the training and eventual missions of such space luminaries as John Glenn, Virgil Grissom and Alan Shepard in their quest to show the Soviets who was boss.

The film makes a number of rather controversial claims, including that Virgil Grissom panicked in his capsule upon splashdown and blew open the capsule's hatch, effectively sinking it and almost drowning him when his spacesuit filled with water. This version of the facts is certainly debatable and makes Grissom appear fairly yellow in hindsight. On the flip side, the film makes Chuck Yeager look like the biggest badass to ever walk the face of the earth, basically implying that had Yeager not flatly refused NASA's offer to take part in their plans he would have been the first American in space. When considering Yeager's track record, it certainly does seem difficult to deny this, but again, it's all quite debatable. The point here isn't to attack the accuracy of "The Right Stuff" but simply to point out that along with being visually stunning and boasting an array of great performances, "The Right Stuff" is also enthralling and gripping in the way good historical epics are, and make no mistake, "The Right Stuff" certainly is an epic and still stands as probably the finest film on the Space Age ever made.

It is a shame that Kaufman's film wasn't more succesful at the box office because "The Right Stuff" is one of the rare films that is at once entertaining, intelligent, and perceptive, kind of like a Tom Wolfe book, really.