A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Space Cowboys

Date Viewed: 8/5/00

Details:

Clint Eastwood

Tommy Lee Jones

Donald Sutherland

James Garner

James Cromwell

Marcia Gay Harden

Producer & director: Clint Eastwood

Score: +

The Review: "Old farts in space" (no disrespect intended, since I'm a younger old fart myself): comedy, action, a bit of a thriller.

After 40 years, it seems that Team Daedalus might be reassembled. These four proto-astronauts were at the peak of their performance (and careers) when they were sidelined in 1958 for a mere chimp. Nursing a grudge against the then mission director (Cromwell), Eastwood has been comfortably retired for lo these many years. However, he's approached again by NASA (because he's the only one left alive!) as an electronics engineer with experience on guidance systems of '60's vintage satellites. It seems a failing Russian communications satellite needs to be rescued; for reasons unexplained, they are not content to let it plummet to Earth. Eastwood agrees, but only on condition of reassembling the team that was ready for space but never quite got there the first time. (Improbable, yes, but no less so than John Glenn's last shuttle flight.) Eastwood's long-term feud with his then-supervisor Cromwell lends one bit of tension, but even more appears when the entire shuttle crew is in orbit, and the significance of the problem becomes apparent.

Part of its appeal is because it is structured like a caper movie, and paced like a con-game; and in some respects, this is not far off the mark. Some of the funnier scenes are the training and testing in preparation for flight certification, all of which reminds me of the testing-to-exhaustion scenes in The Right Stuff (1983), with the same wry humor -- even if some of the rules are being broken a bit more explicitly this time round.

Marcia Gay Harden is excellent as the sympathetic engineer and mission director. Although a bit of self-parody, this movie makes it clear why actors of the quality of Eastwood, Jones, Garner and Sutherland do not need to be sidelined, as their careers advance, into staid and less active roles -- they clearly have the "right stuff" and should be encouraged to demonstrate it.

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