The Challenger Disaster

While the narrow view of the tragedy means a limit to the movie’s broader appeal, it’s intensely refreshing to see a story like this told without any need to soften or commercialize its ideas.

Quiet, intelligent, worth checking out.

The Challenger investigation story doesn’t have quite the level of malfeasance or the cloak-and-dagger undertones of other movies about real-life government or business debacles. But it still makes for an absorbing tale, one that seems well timed for our current moment of bungled websites, unrestrained eavesdropping and public skepticism.

The Challenger Disaster adeptly uses its story time by leaning on Hurt to at once capture Feynman’s brilliance and captivating personality while also showing that Feynman’s own sense of compressed mortality and his adherence to scientific truth helped stop what could have been a whitewash.

It’s not just a good story, it’s a good story well told.

As Feynman, it takes the workmanlike Hurt a little too long to shuffle through the slate of go-to moods and characters he’s played already, but he eventually lands on a unique and compelling take on the man.

It plays more like a science thriller than a biopic, with Feynman receiving clues scribbled on pieces of paper by NASA engineers.