Nyad (2023) review

Long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad (Annette Bening), at age 60, is determined to make the difficult one-hundred mile voyage from Havana, Cuba to Key West, Florida and asks loyal friend Bonnie Stoll (Jodie Foster) and navigator John Bartlett (Rhys Ifans) - along with a few others - to help her complete her mission, but after she fails multiple times (such factors as exhaustion and stinging jellyfish become a problem) her "crew" doubt it's possible (the fifth attempt turns out to be the charm).  It's logical for married directors Vasarhelyi and Chin to choose this as their narrative debut, considering their interest in extreme feats of human endurance (Free Solo won them an Academy Award), but they tend to overembellish the dramatic aspects of the story (the childhood flashback material is gaudy ... if sad) and Nyad herself is a polarizing figure: for example, she experiences schadenfreude when a younger athlete can't finish her own journey, and thinks nothing of bossing around her "friends" (and everyone else).  The cast makes the best of it - a pal like Bonnie is a true gift - although the record was "revoked" by the Guinness Book of World Records due to "incomplete" data and a "lack of independent observers": in other words, they're immortalizing the fiction, not the facts.  By the way, did I ever tell you about the time I did the Charleston all the way up Denali?