Space Cowboys (2000)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Frank Corvin, ‘Hawk’ Hawkins, Jerry O'Neill and ‘Tank’ Sullivan were hotdog members of Project Daedalus, the US Air Force's test program for space travel, but their hopes were dashed in 1958 with the formation of NASA and the use of trained chimps. They blackmail their way into orbit when Russia's mysterious ‘Ikon’ communications satellite's orbit begins to degrade and threatens to crash to Earth.
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What critics compared Space Cowboys to
This odd hybrid of comedy, science-fiction and action-thriller genres touches at times on "The Right Stuff," "Grumpy Old Men" and "Armageddon," among many others.
The attempt to make an emotional connection fails to take hold, and the "Grumpy Old Men" meets "The Right Stuff" scenario, while funny at times, runs out of steam.
"Space Cowboys" lacks the urgency of a movie like " The Right Stuff "--it's too secure within its traditional story structure to make much seem at risk--but with the structure come the traditional pleasures as well.
It's not as slow and methodical as, say, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) or The Right Stuff (1983), but it's not in-your-face like Armageddon (1998).
The film tries to achieve the level of The Right Stuff or the HBO miniseries From The Earth To The Moon, and the effects and stunning Earth-from-space photography help a lot, but story-wise, what emerges is something more akin to Armageddon : technical mumbo-jumbo, slick-but-inexplicable action sequences, and a trite romantic subplot.
Essentially remaking The Right Stuff to fit its condescending ideas about old farts (smart, tough and reliable), young snotnoses (dim, weak and slippery) and the man's-man milieu of hotshot piloting, Eastwood's movie is simple-minded hootch, dispensing with reality (honestly, these fogies would drop down dead in a real g-force training session) and trafficking in relentless dentured camaraderie.
In fact, just a couple of years after Armageddon, Clint Eastwood demonstrated how to do it in Space Cowboys , a movie that is almost exactly the same as Armageddon, but with less volume and more style.
The generous camaraderie among this geezer ensemble (including the perennially untapped William Devane as a Flight Director) elevates their material, which in and of itself invites fascinating comparisons to Armageddon ; I found myself not wanting the delightfully bittersweet training sequences to cease and desist, for they would naturally result in outer space scenes.
This odd hybrid of comedy, science-fiction and action-thriller genres touches at times on "The Right Stuff," "Grumpy Old Men" and "Armageddon," among many others.
Actor-producer-director Eastwood does the big Hollywood blockbuster thing with Space Cowboys, basically a geriatric version of Armageddon.
"Space Cowboys" may be pure popcorn, but stylistically it's more "2001" than it is "Armageddon."
When the action finally does get off the ground, it goes into "Armageddon" territory, with the Russian satellite's true purpose finally (and predictably) revealed.
We love Space Cowboys , an entertaining and rambunctious film directed by Clint Eastwood about a group of aging Air Force pilots who are recruited by NASA for a special mission.
“Space Cowboys” and “The Expendables” are two such examples of “old timers” showing they still have what it takes.
Red wants to fit into the same mold that cast Space Cowboys as kind of a geezer adventure where those past their prime are suddenly thrust back into action in a world that has left them for dead.
So much of this movie doesn't make sense, as if it's been cobbled together from left-overs of Transformers, Independence Day and, in one hilariously stupid plot turn, Space Cowboys.
Then, when all the destroyers are sunk, the crew is forced to bring out a 70-year-old battleship, complete with its crew, a team of aging Korean War veterans who know how to run it (shades of “Space Cowboys”).
In the grand tradition of silly and overblown (yet ultimately crowd-pleasing) action flicks like Armageddon, Independence Day, and Transformers, or even to a lesser degree Space Cowboys, comes actor-turned-director Peter Berg's latest, Battleship, which stars Taylor Kitsch ("Friday Night Lights," John Carter) and Alexander Skarsgard ("True Blood") as a pair of brothers enlisted in the Navy who must face off against an alien fleet in the middle of the Pacific during what was supposed to be a day of standard Naval maneuvers.
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The Expendables might have been a movie about old warriors not going gently into that good night, something along the comic lines of Space Cowboys.