By Cynthia Ayala

“Based on a true story. A team of African-American women provide NASA with important mathematical data needed to launch the program’s first successful space missions.”

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Such a remarkable film that brings to life the history not only about NASA and the space race but also about three amazing women who were instrumental in the space race and the war on racism.

Taraji P. Henson plays Katherine Goble, African-American physicist and mathematician in the aeronautics space program. She plays this incredible woman who had to face not only racism but sexism in the space department as she fights to prove her worth to the program and that her smarts go beyond her gender and race. It was a remarkable performance that is important for the present because it is a film that fights and pushes against those boundaries.

It’s a powerful movie that reflects on history and moreover, it’s a reflection of where this world can go now. It can go backward but this film highlights that thinking backward, thinking about race and gender, it hinders progress. It did not help NASA to keep Goble in the dark, it did not help NASA to keep Goble to keep their best engineers and mathematicians as computers just because they were negro women. The moment they moved past those barriers, NASA could achieve everything they wanted, and just think where the country has gone because of those achieve. This film does such an excellent job of highlighting that, of bringing to life how important these women were to our country. And it’s insulting that only now are their contributions coming to life.

But the film isn’t just about their contributions, all of which were so important, it’s about how they progressed, who they were as people and everything they overcame to move up in the world where negro women were unable to move up in. But they did it, they made names for themselves, they made an impact to the world, they made the contributions to culture and science and they asked for nothing in return except to be treated as equals. These three women were some of the smartest women in history and the performances here did those roles justice. These actresses and actors nailed their parts, they understood everything they had to bring to life and they did it with brilliance. These three women, they were stars, not just the actors but the people they portrayed as well. All of that makes this a remarkable film, one everyone should see and appreciate. (| A)

—Film Credits—

Directed by Theodore Melfi

Screenplay by Allison Schroeder & Theodore Melfi

Based on Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

Starring: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst & Jim Parsons

Rating | Length | Genre: PG | 2h 7min | Biography, Drama, History

Distributed by 20^th Century Fox