Still the Right Stuff. - Review - movie review

National Review, Sept 11, 2000 by John Simon

One approaches a movie like Space Cowboys with some trepidation. The world saved from nuclear holocaust by four old codgers, former maverick Army test pilots, and now the only ones who can go into space on a most delicate and precarious mission? Next thing we'll have Godzilla stoppable only by the combined efforts of Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat, and Tom and Jerry. But farfetched as Space Cowboys may be and steeped as it is in technological lore-which sounds especially arcane when barked out in outer space-this film is great fun even if your technology does not extend beyond the screwdriver and the pre-halogen light bulb.

Frank and Tank and Hawk and Jerry were known as Team Daedalus back in 1958, a fearless foursome of test pilots ready to fly into outer space when NASA replaced the Air Force in the space program and, to the team's utter humiliation, a chimpanzee became first in space. Now the Russian satellite Ikon is in trouble, drifting toward earth and, as it turns out, illegally equipped with six nuclear warheads. It is too cumbersome for retrieval, and the only one who can redirect it is the D'Artagnan of our four musketeers, Frank Corvin (Clint Eastwood). He had designed the guidance system of the early Skylab satellite, which the Russians managed to steal for Ikon. But this system is by now so antiquated that no one at NASA can master it in the time remaining. Why nobody from Russia can is a bit of a mystery.

So Frank is hauled out of retirement by Bob Gerson (James Cromwell), the former commanding general and nemesis of the Daedalus four, who now wants him to teach some young astronauts to fix Ikon. It would take too much time, and Frank extorts from Gerson the reconvening of Team Daedalus for a flight they have been dreaming of for 40-odd years. But they have to prove themselves mentally and physically as fit as the youngsters, which generates a slew of comic incidents.

So does the continuing sniping between Frank and Gerson, now even crustier after the encrustation of four decades. But even if they prove fit, Team Daedalus will be accompanied by two young backup astronauts. These two, alas, are cliches: Evan (Loren Dean), the hothead and troublemaker, and Roger (Courtney B. Vance), the obligatory cool black. To complicate matters, NASA now has for a flight director the cynical Eugene Davis (William Devane), in charge of astronaut training and making life miserable for the old boys. To sweeten things a bit, the director for the Ikon mission is Sara Holland (Marcia Gay Harden), an understatedly sexy young woman, who falls in love with the widowed Hawk and he with her, even though the ladies' man is Jerry (Donald Sutherland).

The beauty of this is that it somehow transcends character stereotypes and plot cliches by artful dialogue, superior acting, apt direction, and fine cinematography. It proves that there is life in the venerable archetypes yet: the old soldiers who never die (though one of them does here); the junior officers locked in a tough-talking contest with their superiors; the new-Army types versus the old-Army types; the devoted buddies who go through hell together, razzing to the end; the star- (or space-) crossed romance; the soldier-versus-civilian fisticuffs; and the rest of the habitual stuff that, in the right hands, can be the right stuff yet again.

You've got to hand it to Clint Eastwood: He has developed not only into a powerful actor but also into a strong director, and he has the courage to switch genres the way others change shirts. So there's lots of comedy here regarding what the musketeers have turned into in private life-especially Tank, the backwoods preacher-and in how the old guys dredge up or fake the physical prowess required of them. Tommy Lee Jones is laconically virile as the chief daredevil Hawk, Sutherland leers with bonhomie as the still lecherous Jerry, and James Garner's paunch only makes him more personable as Tank.

James Cromwell's Gerson is drier than zwieback. William Devane's Eugene sneers grandly, Marcia Gay Harden neatly balances staunchness and tenderness, and the two "youngsters," Dean and Vance, are good foils for the veterans. The writing team, Ken Kaufman and Howard Klausner-the former newish, the latter a first-timer-do as well by tricky science as by tangy humor; Jack N. Green, Eastwood's longtime cameraman, is as vivid in space as he is vital on earth.

Although NASA gave the film full support, and access to both the Johnson and Kennedy space centers, I suspect that the superb old art director/production designer Henry Bumstead contributed more than a little to the authenticity. Add a sensibly unemphatic score by Lennie Niehaus and expert visual effects by Industrial Light and Magic, and you have a crew every bit as splendid as Team Daedalus.

-- I would like to report that the modest but deserving independent film ThThe Tic Code is in its small-scale way as good as Space Cowboys. A better-than-average illness movie, more smart than sentimental, it is nevertheless not quite up to examining in sufficient depth and detail the troublesome and humiliating Tourette's syndrome and those it affects directly or indirectly.