Space Cowboys

Written by: Ken Kaufman & Howard Klausner Starring: Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, James Garner, Loren Dean, Courtney Vance, James Cromwell, William Devane, Marcia Gay Harden

The year: 1958. America is about to launch its first traveler to outer space. Will it be one of the four stalwart pilots training for the mission? Nope, it will be a chimp. Naturally, the four pilots are miffed. So begins “Space Cowboys,” a senior citizen fantasy inspired, I suppose, by John Glenn’s triumphant (and completely senseless) return to outer space. The black-and-white prologue occupies about 45 minutes, which is 40 minutes too long, and it demonstrates just how little this picture has on its mind. When a picture has nothing to say, it spends a lot of time on non-essential backstory and technical details (many of which are probably fake). Kaufman and Klausner obviously could not decide what they wanted this picture to be (a comedy? a space thriller?), so they opted for both, and, as is often the case in these situations, neither objective plays out satisfactorily. Director Eastwood, who is normally quite capable, flounders around with the weak script, and the end result is disposable piffle. Flash forward 40 years or so.

The four pilots have grown up to be Eastwood (Frank), Jones (Hawk), Garner (Tank), and Sutherland (Jerry). Meanwhile, the guidance system on a Russian satellite has failed, but it is so old that only the guy who designed it can fix it, and that guy is Frank. Frank promptly bulldozes his old boss Bob (Cromwell), with whom he had a falling out years ago after the chimp incident, into allowing the team to reunite for the mission. (The picture makes Bob out to be a bad guy, but he never really seems that bad; he just makes decisions the pilots don’t like.) Bob agrees reluctantly but insists that the four boys pass all the requisite tests beforehand. We are then treated to the spectacle of our heroes training alongside the new generation of astronauts. I’ve got to hand it to the four stars: they make aging about as sexy as it is possible to be (aside from Sophia Loren, that is), and if the script had followed its better instincts and stuck to that theme, the picture might have survived as an amusing wish fulfillment fantasy.

But it never takes the position that the oldsters are better than the youngsters--or that they are worse. It actually seems to be about a wash. Hawk is a better pilot than the young guys, apparently, but none of the senior astronauts can really compete physically (they have to cheat a bit to pass the tests). There is even a scene in a bar when Frank is challenged by a young tough. Now, I would have been perfectly willing to believe that Frank could still whup the insolent lout, but the movie opts to deprive us of even this simple satisfaction. What we are left with, then, is an implausible story played out in an implausible fashion. The plot simply doesn’t make a lot of sense. No matter how old the mischievous guidance system, there is no reason to send Frank and his buddies into space, unless you choose to portray them as supermen who are truly better qualified than the new breed. And I would have been much happier if even one person had suggested blowing the satellite up instead of trying to fix it. Instead, the picture tries to go all serious, sentimental, and suspenseful on us, and it doesn’t work.

It even includes a sort-of romance between Hawk and the much younger doctor played by Harden, as well as a health crisis that threatens one of the team. But when the four guys blast off, the picture reverts to predictable space adventure, and the fun pretty much fizzles out. There are some good, funny moments in “Space Cowboys.” I liked the scene in which the four astronauts appear on the “Tonight Show.” It had an easy humor about it, probably because it seemed like Jay Leno was interviewing the stars themselves rather than the characters they were portraying. The movie makes a few sharp observations about the indignities of growing old, but it also allows itself the occasional easy laugh about them, and that’s not exactly breaking new ground. I also think it’s fair to say that any picture that ends with a dead American astronaut on the moon--and expects us to find that uplifting--needs to rethink its basic approach. The charm and presence of the four stars is the film’s biggest asset, and in the end, even their right stuff isn’t enough. (8/6/2000)