Yeehah! Space Cowboys heads `em up and moves `em out! In Space Cowboys a Russian space satellite is falling out of space and the Russians ask NASA for help in stabilizing its orbit claiming that if the satellite is destroyed it will interrupt communications within Russia which could result in chaos and possibly even civil war. Oddly enough the satellite has an American control system, something it obviously shouldn�t have, but a system so old that only Frank Corvin, the man who designed it forty years ago in the days preceding NASA, understands how to repair the satellite in time to save it. However, Corvin has a grudge, you see, he and the three officers under his command in the Air Force�s Team Daedalus had trained hard under the promise of being the first Americans in space only to be replaced at the last moment by�a monkey. So Corvin makes NASA a deal; he�ll repair their satellite for them, but only if he and his three former crewmates are sent up in space to do the job. NASA agrees, provided all four men can pass NASA�s rigorous physical requirement in time for lift off. But Team Daedalus has other worries then physical conditioning such as how did the Russians got hold of an American satellite operating system to begin with and is the satellite just for communications or is it for something more�sinister?
Space Cowboys is arguably the best movie of the year. Intelligent, sweet, funny and exciting with fabulous special effects and an all star cast at the very top of their form. Clint Eastwood plays Frank Corvin, head of Team Daedalus, with James Garner, Donald Sutherland and Tommy Lee Jones playing the rest of his aged to perfection crew. The humor is wonderful, especially in the squabbling between both the members of Team Daedalus themselves and between them and their younger counterparts at NASA. All of the character interactions, little and big, ring true and the acting by everyone involved was wonderful, but Donald Sutherland deserves special mention. Mr. Sutherland is a highly talented and respected actor, but I would have never have thought of him as having the ability of Tommy Lee Jones or Clint Eastwood, yet here he outshined both of them. His was easily the most interesting and amusing member of Team Daedalus and some of the most humorous moments involved his character. When the film finally moves from Earth to space the laughs give way to thrills when the mission truly begins and, of course, goes snafu. By this point a few things become a bit predictable, but even so the tension is still maintained and the ending nicely bittersweet. The film�s final scene was especially nice.
One of Space Cowboys most intelligent touches deserves special mention. When casting the film they cast actors to play Team Daedalus as young men who looked eerily like Eastwood and Co. could have actually looked forty years ago. In fact, the younger actor hired to play Clint Eastwood�s character even had Eastwood�s traditional scowl down so well that I wondered for a moment if they�d transposed images of Eastwood himself, when he was younger, into that part of the film. But even better; they used voiceovers by Eastwood & Co. so that the young actors even sounded like their older counterparts. Not a big thing perhaps, but one of those nice touches that help make a good movie great.
Still, Space Cowboys is not perfect. More time could and should have been devoted to Garner and Sutherland�s characters, who gave the film most of its humor, and less to the forty-year-old feud between Eastwood and Jones. Garner seemed to get especially short shift though he made the most of what screen time he did have and the limited time given to his character could have been the result of Garner�s having broken his arm during the filming of Space Cowboys. Also, a few parts of the movie seemed a bit murky to me in that I didn�t completely understand what was happening or why the characters were doing what they were doing. For example, toward the end of the film I wasn�t even sure if one of the secondary characters was killed or simply badly injured. As I said, it was fairly murky since if he were dead a lot of effort during a major crisis was expended in saving his body, but at the same time I don�t see how he could have survived what appeared to happen to him. I can�t say more about what happened or the other incidents I found slightly confusing without causing spoilers and, in the long run, they didn�t have any real adverse impact on Space Cowboys, but a little clarity would have been nicer.
So saddle up and blast off to your local theatre to see Space Cowboys. You�ll love the ride.
Grade: A+
