This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Too Big to Fail
Plot Overview
Flimflam
artist Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson) is tapped by White
House fixer Moe Berkus (Woody Harrelson) to sell America's 1960s
space race to a public jaded by the Vietnam War. When Congress enacts
an opening for private support, Kelly's discreet product placements
rake in the dough. When government support is about to dry up, she
puts in a word to the right ears.
When the goal changes from landing a man on the moon to beating
the Soviets there, it is decided at the highest level to develop a
contingency plan to show a moon landing whether we went there
or not. To that end Kelly brings in director Lance Vespertine
(Jim Rash) to film a mock-up in a spare hangar.
A technical
problem develops at the last minute regarding the splice between the real
feed & the fake one. Endemic bad luck threatens to let the cat out of
the bag. As if that weren't enough, devil-may-care PR Kelly and by-the-book launch director Cole Davis
(Channing Tatum) find their frisson turning into romance.
The fetching
con artist has a lot she could teach us about success in life, along
the lines of King Solomon deriving lessons from nature: (Prov. 30:24) “There be four things
which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise.”
Ideology
(Prov. 30:25) “The ants are a people
not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer.” Start
working in your youth, i.e. the
summer of life. She was born in Kansas (“I'm a con artist and
I always have been”) née Winnie. At the age of four she
started selling small potatoes items door-to-door for her mom. It
expanded to real estate and then insurance.
(Prov. 30:26) “The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks.” The conies seem to follow the three guiding principles of real estate: location, location, location. They make their homes where there's safety. Kelly made her way to New York where the action is and was marketing high-priced automobiles as the movie starts.
(Prov. 30:27) “The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands.” Success involves having the right cohorts. Kelly had an associate Ruby Martin (Anna Garcia) who tagged along with her. She was also able to conscript help at will, from the NASA engineers installing a window on her office wall to a police escort bringing a critical device to the launch pad.
(Prov. 30:28) “The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces.” Finally, one needs to take hold of her own niche. That palace gets swept regularly, but the spider keeps putting up new webs. Kelly has a whole stack of id's & aliases. She moves on when her current scam falls through as is about to happen here.
Production Values
“” (2024) was directed by Greg Berlanti. It was written by Keenan Flynn, Bill Kirstein and Rose Gilroy. It stars Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Woody Harrelson, Ray Romano, and Colin Jost. The actors did a good job but probably not enough to win any awards. Johansson was dressed to the nines in 60's fashions and was like to make the young men drool.
MPA rated it PG–13 for some strong language, and smoking. It was filmed on location in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA (shooting at Kennedy Space Center March 2023.) The rocket launch rattled the seats. It has a running time of 2 hours 12 minutes.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
I'm an amateur radio operator, and some of my fellow hams had the antennas and receivers to track the Apollo missions to the moon and back—observing time delays, moon shadow, and doppler shift. So I'm pretty sure we went there, though who knows if there were a contingency plan.
I saw the Apollo 11 shot on live TV back in my junior year in college. Exiting the theater in 2024 I compared notes with a man who saw it when he was in the army and his wife when she was about to graduate high school. This was a shared experience a lot of people can have all over again.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Decent action scenes. Suitability for Children: Suitable for children 13+ years with guidance. Special effects: Absolutely amazing special effects. Video Occasion: Good for Groups. Suspense: A few suspenseful moments. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.
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