Year of Eastwood #37

Space Cowboys (2000)

Starring: Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones,
Donald Sutherland, James Garner
Directed by Eastwood

30 years down the road from Kelly’s Heroes, Clint and Sutherland team up again in Space Cowboys. This time Clint’s a crotchety old man and Sutherland is an aging lothario who re-team with their old comrades, Jones and Garner, to make a flight into space that they were denied back in the beginning days of the space program. I’m sure the idea for this film took off with the real-life adventures of old man in space, John Glenn, who was propped up for a space flight back in 1998 at the ripe age of 77.

Space Cowboys - not to be confused with Spaced Invaders (a 1990 zany comedy about stoned ET’s coming to Earth: wackiness ensues) - begins with a flashback of the young guns, breaking the sound barrier in their jets, only to be passed over for the first American space flights by some monkey … Clyde’s revenge? Years later, the men are now AARP members but still searching for their lost thrill - be it crop dusting, testing roller coasters, or installing garage door openers.

Turns out there’s an old Russian satellite about to crash to Earth and the only guys familiar with the navigation system on the old clunker are these old clunkers, so it’s time for a reunion in outer space. The old men are put thru the rigors and tumbles of the space training program. They also have time to get into some bar fights and chase much younger women.

Space Cowboys is pure movie entertainment. Don’t spend too much time trying to figure out the logistics of the plot - or the plausibility of these old men running 20 miles - because this movie is here for a few laughs, some exciting action, and a whacked-out “Armageddon” style finale. And Clint’s in the director’s chair to make sure everything moves along at a good pace.

Sutherland and Garner are along for the ride as comic relief - I’m not really even sure what their job on the space mission is really. And it’s a little odd to have Jones as the heart-throb heroic role, but Tommy Lee’s entertaining in most things he does. The internet (which never lies) says that originally Jack Nicholson and Sean Connery were considered for roles in Space Cowboys - which would have been an epic teaming, but it’s hard to imagine all those egos would have fit into the cockpit.

Clint is the steady force of the group … a steady, old, cranky, grumpy force. Most of Clint’s roles in the last 20 years of his career involve him griping and complaining most of his lines. Which I guess if you think about it, most old men in movies are cranky (except maybe Hal Holbrook in Into the Wild). Although his roles in younger days weren’t exactly a barrel of monkeys either … so he usually leaves that up to the Donalds and the Burts and the actual monkeys.