Space Cowboys by Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, James Garner | 883929078080 | DVD | Barnes & Noble®
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Overview
In this adventure drama, four men passed over by the space program get one last chance to be heroes and live out their dreams. Frank Corvin (Clint Eastwood), Hawk Hawkins (Tommy Lee Jones), Jerry O'Neill (Donald Sutherland), and Tank Sullivan (James Garner) were top pilots within an elite Air Force squadron and on the fast track to becoming the first Americans in space in the early 1950s. However, when NASA was established, the pilots were cut out of the loop; Corvin went on to become an aerospace engineer, Hawkins continued on as a freelance pilot, O'Neill became an astrophysicist with a sideline in designing roller coasters, and Sullivan took up preaching as a Baptist minister. Years later, a Russian satellite's guidance system has started to malfunction, and it is expected to crash into the Earth within a matter of weeks. The system is identical to the one Corvin designed for Skylab, so NASA head Bob Gerson (James Cromwell) asks Corvin to help him with the emergency mission to repair the satellite. Corvin agrees under one condition -- that he be sent up to do the repairs himself, with Hawkins, O'Neill, and Sullivan as his crew. Clint Eastwood directed Space Cowboys while also starring as Frank Corvin; his supporting cast includes Marcia Gay Harden, Courtney B. Vance, Loren Dean, and William Devane.
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Editorial Reviews
Barnes & Noble  - Ed Hulse
A quartet of aging but still popular stars strut their stuff in Space Cowboys, a rollicking adventure film that delivers a playful poke in the eye to youth-obsessed Hollywood. Clint Eastwood , Tommy Lee Jones , James Garner , and Donald Sutherland -- representing 150 combined years of experience in front of the camera -- play retired Air Force men who washed out of America’s space program four decades earlier. Their collective expertise in now-obsolete computer technology suddenly makes these geriatric flyers invaluable: Repairs are desperately needed on a failing, missile-loaded Russian satellite, and the old-timers are launched into space to do what the younger astronauts can’t. Eastwood, who also directs, depicts the space program’s training regimen with a documentarian's fidelity and elicits laughs by showing himself and his costars huffing their ways through its rigors. The film’s character-driven script provides each of the veteran stars with pithy dialogue and scene-stealing moments, and their spirited interplay is even more entertaining than the mission itself. There’s no shortage of action, thrills, or suspense, but Space Cowboys is also warmly humorous, wistful, and elegiac, and thus ranks among Eastwood’s best movies. DVD supplements include behind-the-scenes footage, documentaries (covering both the film’s production and NASA’s operations), theatrical trailers, special DVD-ROM content, and web access.
All Movie Guide  - Karl Williams
An unusually populist comedy for a director of such normally refined tastes, this geriatric space adventure from Clint Eastwood spoofs the aging of the Baby Boomer generation with broad appeal, but flags in its poorly structured third act. While Space Cowboys gets off to an interesting start in a flashback sequence that casts lookalike actors with their voices dubbed by the film's stars, the story's central conceit (four aging would-be astronauts getting one last chance to blast off) is exhaustively rehashed, making for a tiring set-up. Once the quartet of creaking seniors is in training for their mission, however, the film finds its legs and purpose, sending up the idea of vitamin-popping oldsters rediscovering their right stuff with zeal and relish. When its characters finally achieve orbit, the film loses its way again, stumbling with a subplot involving an egotistical young colleague who botches a job and the unexpected illness of a central figure. Nevertheless, Space Cowboys is about two-thirds of a fine and enjoyably risible comedy that is a bounce back for Eastwood after stumbling badly with his last directorial effort, True Crime (1999).
New York Times  - A.O. Scott
Mr. Eastwood is ordinarily a rather earthbound director, more interested in the efficient conveyance of story and character than in visual beauty, but here the special effects by industrial Light and Magic add depth and richness to the movie without distracting from the greater pleasure of watching 4 great actors reclaim their prime...