Space Cowboys
No matter how old men get, Space Cowboys is proof that their boyhood dreams are not bound by time or space. Clint Eastwood has directed an enjoyable fantasy in which he and three other old timers are given the chance to fulfill a lifelong wish that has never disappeared from memory: to go on a space trip. It is of secondary importance that the world is saved as well.
"I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now", Bob Dylan once sang in My Back Pages. Aging has long been a theme in Clint Eastwood's oeuvre, but never before has he dealt with it so lightly as in Space cowboys. Perhaps it is therefore better to look at the matter from the other side and conclude that the cheerful message he is propagating here can be summed up with the exclamation: 'stay young!' fatigued physically and mentally, in Space Cowboys he promotes the proposition that a man is only as young as he feels. Space Cowboys is therefore not automatically one of the best films of his long, impressive career, but it is one of his most vital of the last ten years. And at a time when the man himself was talking again in Venice about his approaching farewell, that is more than I dared hope for beforehand.
Space cowboys is set in the world of space travel, but is intended for anyone with dreams that have long since been overtaken by, for example, having children, a bad condition, or simply age. Clint Eastwood encourages everyone who dreams of doing something great someday, somewhere, when it's actually too late for that.
In Space Cowboys, something similar happens to four former top aviators, who together formed Team Daedalus in the 1960s and were nominated for a long time to be the first Americans to be sent into space. At least until the NASA officials decided to use a more intelligent and suitable creature for that: a monkey. Thus, the Russians won the Space Race while Frank Corvin (Eastwood) and the rest of his motley crew bitterly stepped back after a conflict with NASA boss Bob Gerson (James Cromwell).
Thirty-five years later, however, that same Gerson is forced to enlist Frank's help when the sky threatens to fall in the form of an old Russian spy satellite. This Icon is powered for mysterious reasons by an American operating system so old that only its designer, Frank Corvin, can handle it. The clock is ticking and all that's left is that Frank and his old crew are still being launched into space to carry out the necessary repair work. By the time our space cowboys really come off Earth, the film has long thrown off any sense of reality, without affecting the film's inner logic. Of course, it's impossible for four men with an average age of over 65 — seriously depressed, by the way, by the 54 of slacker Hawk Hawkins (Tommy Lee Jones) — to be groomed in three weeks for a space program that requires young, fit guys to train for a year and a half. . But that's not the point. Space cowboys is a fantasy designed as realistically as possible. It is a film in which the makers try to make the audience an irresistible proposal. Both sides know that what's happening on the canvas can't be true, but the illusion is so nice, why would anyone want to let it be disturbed by something as futile as reality?
Watching Space cowboys and, most importantly, going along with them is part of a conspiracy. A feeling that's heightened by the fact that the quintessential foursome - which includes flight engineer Jerry O'Neill (Donald Sutherland) and navigator Tank Sullivan (James Garner) - are also plotting against dark NASA forces that would rather bring them to the ground. to hold. They receive support from a mission supervisor played by Marcia Gay Harden, who really seems unable to cope with such an attractive senior citizen's club around her. Part of its charm is in its playful old man humour, characterized by a pleasing sense of self-mockery and eager use of every possible physical flaw, but without the rudeness that has become commonplace in this Farrelly Brothers era. .
The joy that the veterans radiate will undoubtedly be real. When asked if he wanted to play in a Clint Eastwood movie for a hundred thousand dollars, Donald Sutherland is said to have answered: "Fine. Just give me two weeks to get the money together." Even the ever so cranky Tommy Lee Jones looks like he was having a good time. They're big kids. Frank, Tank, Hawk and Jerry. Young dogs too. In this playful way, Eastwood emphasizes that the boy in the man does not have to die prematurely.
Space Cowboys is a warm, humanistic film, which loses some of its eloquence in the last part when the story conforms a little too easily to the laws of the average American blockbuster. Then Space turns cowboys into an Armageddon for the over-65s, including a fine example of self-sacrifice à la Bruce Willis in that patriotic mega-hit. Visually, the professional but never too glossy-looking film can compete with most major summer films, and there is nothing wrong with the special effects that are deployed in the last half hour. In the memory, however, especially the first hour and a half of Space cowboys lives on. Those memories feed the fantasy and so the cycle of unrealizable but life-affirming dreams begins again.