Space Cowboys film review

certificate_PG

SPACE COWBOYS

You often wonder who comes up with the ideas for some of these films, so fantastical are the plots. With Space Cowboys, I can only imagine that Clint and his buddies Tommy, Donald and James were out one night, having a few beers, shooting some pool and talking shop when one of them, a little the worse for wear, came up with the inspired idea that they all team up as astronauts and save the world from the perils of a Russian satellite heading for earth with a hidden threat aboard. The usual consequences of a heavy night’s drinking are a hangover, some indeterminate stains on your clothes and a determined vow never to touch alcohol again. Unfortunately, in Clint and the boys’ case, the result is Space Cowboys.

Eastwood has aged with dignity and style. He has continued to do valid work and refuses to settle for playing the type of frail old men his 70 years would allow him. Instead he continues to see himself as the loner, renegade hero, but to do this with conviction is becoming increasingly difficult.

In Space Cowboys Eastwood plays Dr Frank Corvin, who in 1958 was the leader of Team Daedalus, the pioneering quartet being trained for the first space flights. When his reckless teammate and rival William 'Hawk' Hawkins (Tommy Lee Jones) crashes the test plane, NASA boss Bob Gerson (James Cromwell) terminates Team Daedalus so ending Corvin’s long held dream to be the first man on the moon.

Forty years later, a Russian satellite, inexplicably being piloted by a computer code designed by Corvin, is malfunctioning and in imminent danger of crash landing on earth. Fearful of the consequences, the only alternative is to send someone up to fix it. However, the aging system is unfamiliar to the modern day NASA scientists and the only person able to repair it is its designer, Frank Corvin.

When approached by his old boss at NASA, Corvin is still resentful of Gerson’s decision to dismantle Team Daedalus and replace them with a monkey. He refuses to help, saying the only circumstances under which he would oblige, would be if he and his old teammates were the ones to go up in space and fix the satellite.

Faced with no time and no alternative, Gerson agrees and so Corvin seeks out his old buddies for their long awaited rendezvous with space.