During the recent run of space based science-fiction movies a friend recommended The Right Stuff - the dramatised story of how early test pilots became the astronauts of the 60s.
Overall, it's an engaging cast in an involving film, but the running time is a bladder-stretching three hours and I felt a tighter edit could have easily brought that down by at least half an hour without hurting the story.
Certain liberties have been taken, e.g. it wasn't Yeager's first time in the X-1 and nor was it apparently unplanned. Nor were relationships between the astronauts and the German scientists on the programme anything like as difficult as the film suggests. I guess these and other points fall into dramatic licence although I can well understand why those involved feel aggrieved.
Apart from some of the iconic scenes e.g. breaking the sound barrier - one thing that stood out for me was the pushiness of the press. Some of those scenes felt uncomfortably claustrophobic.
The picture quality of the DVD is fairly rough in places. There are extremely high levels of grain with anything involving people set against a darkening sky and some early scenes feel too dark. But that may be a problem with the source material rather than the encode. Still, I cannot complain too much - the DVD was just 25p in the charity shop remainder bin.
Verdict: Lengthy & good docudrama.
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