Ryan Gosling

• Title: First Man
• IMDb: link

Adapted from the book First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, director Damien Chazelle‘s story about the life and career of Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) is a well-made film highlighting various moments of the astronaut’s life before the fateful first steps of the moon landing. There’s obvious care taken into the look of the film, various historic NASA elements, and capturing Armstrong both at work and with his family. The movie doesn’t delve too deep into what made Armstrong tick (there’s nothing here you won’t find on Wikipedia, for example), and jumps around quite a bit during early segments. That, along with Gosling’s stoic performance, does keep the audience at arm’s length as I struggled to connect emotionally with the factually accurate tale that still left me a bit cold.

First Man isn’t focused solely on Armstrong’s career at NASA, nor his family life, nor even the series of personal and professional tragedies leading up to walking on the moon. Instead First Man attempts a more comprehensive look than it can comfortably deal with in an already long 141-minute running time. This leaves us with a good film, that I enjoyed, but one I’m unlikely to revisit anytime soon.

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