Why go to epic lengths — a three-and-a-quarter-hour duration, a sixteen-year time span, a $27 million budget — and not also go to epic heights? Or to ask it another way: who wants to see a smart-ass epic? Philip Kaufman's portrait of the first American astronauts does not want to treat its subjects with anything near reverence (it saves that attitude for the unsung test pilot, Chuck Yeager). But this means, practically speaking, that in order to preserve the Special Breed status proclaimed in the title, everyone else in the cast of characters must be reduced in proportion. Hence, character after character, or caricature after caricature, gets chopped off at the knees. Or hips. Or upwards. There are perhaps enough good moments here — most of them revolving around John Glenn, a.k.a. Dudley Doright, Harry Hairshirt, and The Clean Marine — to sustain a movie of average length; but not to sustain one twice that long. Based on the book by Tom Wolfe; with Ed Harris, Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn, and Dennis Quaid. (1983) — Duncan Shepherd
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