This is one of my favorite movies. It starts with test pilot Chuck Yeager(Sam Shepard)and some of his accomplishments; and then right on through the trials and tribulations of picking the original seven Mercury astronauts and the final Mercury mission.

Great NASA footage integrated into this meaty Philip Kaufman epic. A better than average ensemble cast. The best performances coming from Ed Harris as John Glenn; Scott Glenn as Alan Shepard; Dennis Quaid as 'Gordo' Cooper and Fred Ward as 'Gus' Grissom. Barbara Hershey was eye catching as Glennis Yeager and Donald Moffat was down right funny as the egotistical Vice President Lyndon Johnson.

How truthful the characters are portrayed may be of question. But the sometimes odd personalities brings humor to what could be a very long and boring systematic movie. THE RIGHT STUFF is interesting, patriotic and empowering. Classified: Do Not Miss!

An interesting insight into the United States' space program, beginning with the exploits of fighter pilot Chuck Yeager (Sam Shephard) and concluding with the dramatic flights of the first astronauts.

Those astronauts - the Mercury 7 pilots - are a varied group of aviators and they are all pretty interesting guys. John Glenn (Ed Harris) gets favorable treatment in here among the group. Gordon Cooper might be the wildest with the cocky and humorous Dennis Quaid playing him. Overall, it's a good cast including not just the fliers but their wives. I also enjoyed Scott Glenn as Alan Shepard and Barbara Hershey as Yeager's wife.

Yeager's feats were perhaps the most interesting and they set a fast tone to this 3-hour film as we witness him breaking several sound-barrier records prior to the formation of the astronaut team. Then we are treated to a long-but-interesting segment of how those first astronauts were trained.

The only unnecessary and ludicrous parts of this film were the ones on Lyndon Johnson, where they made him into a total fool. It was as if the screen writers had a personal vendetta against him, to make him look almost like a cartoon figure. And the bit with the Australian Aborigines smacks too much of Hollywood's love affair with tribal religions. I sincerely doubt some sparks from a fire on earth could be seen miles and miles above in space.

At any rate, this was an informative look at a period in our history than came-and-went way too fast. Sad to say, most people know very little about those first astronauts, who were true heroes. At least this film gives them their due, as well as to Yeager, who deserved this tribute, too

Based on Tom Wolfe's novel, "The Right Stuff" shows the lives and occupations of the astronauts involved in America's space race with the Soviet Union. Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard),Alan Shepard (Scott Glenn),John Glenn (Ed Harris),Gordon Cooper (Fred Ward),and Gus Grissom (Dennis Quaid) all see fit to do their jobs, while occasionally taking the time to goof off and do things with their families. Their missions can range from exhilarating to dangerous, but they always see themselves as having a duty to their country.

Sometimes it's hard to believe how far we've come, and at the same time wonder why modern missions never seem to work; every famous mission since Apollo 11 seems to have had something go wrong. Apollo 13 had its famous disaster, the Challenger blew up, the mission in early 2003 blew up, and there was just a mission this year that had a snafu. Maybe all astronauts since Apollo 11 were too busy watching "I Dream of Jeannie", and thus assumed that being an astronaut would enable them to own a beautiful genie (no offense to "IDOJ"; I love that show).

Oh, yes, and I saw Yuri Gagarin's grave in Red Square, also the final resting place of Vladimir Lenin, John Reed, and some other famous people like that. I guess that you could say that the USSR beat us to space with Sputnik and then was the first country to send a person into space, but then we beat them to the moon, so it's a fair trade-off. And anyway, China sent someone into space two years ago, so everyone gets a part in this.