SPACE COWBOYSÂ (12)
D: Clint Eastwood
Warner Bros./Village Roadshow/Malpaso (Clint Eastwood
& Andrew Lazar)
US/Australia 2000
129 mins
Science Fiction/Adventure
W: Ken Kaufman & Howard Klausner
DP: Jack N. Green
Ed: Joel Cox
Mus: Lennie Niehaus
PD: Henry Bumstead
Clint Eastwood (Col. Frank Corvin), Tommy Lee Jones (Col.
William Hawkins), Donald Sutherland (Capt. Jerry O'Neill), James Garner (Capt. "Tank" Sullivan), Marcia Gay Harden (Sara Holland), William Devane (Gene Davis)
As a director, Clint Eastwood has made some of the best
films of his career, gripping westerns like Unforgiven and The Outlaw Josey Wales, tense thrillers like The Dead Pool and The Gauntlet. He's also made ridiculously implausible action vehicles
like Firefox. Space Cowboys falls into the latter category.
As a retired astronaut, he assembles a small team of his
contemporaries to go into space to repair a satellite.
This plot falls into the same level of intelligence used
in 1998's sci-fi blockbuster Armageddon, where the filmmakers expect the audience to swallow the logic that only unsuitable people can do a job in space, presumably because NASA training is
lazily inept.
Despite the stupidity of the plot, the film is reasonably
entertaining, with good performances from the geriatric astronauts, but it's impossible to ignore how ludicrous it all is.
5/10