Space Cowboys
USA/Australia 2000
Reviewed by Edward Buscombe
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
1958, somewhere over a desert in the American West. Two US airforce pilots, Frank Corvin and Hawk Hawkins, eject when their experimental plane begins to break up. Both are members of an elite team of flyers named Daedalus. Later, in front of assembled press, the team are humiliated by being told they will no longer be part of the space programme.
Cut to the present. A Russian communications satellite is falling out of orbit. Its guidance system is based on a design by Corvin. NASA asks him to help fix it. Despite the opposition of General Gerson, a long-time enemy, Corvin persuades NASA to allow Team Daedalus to carry out the repairs in space. Corvin and his reunited team, comprising Hawkins, Jerry O'Neill and Tank Sullivan, embark on a programme of physical and technical training. Following a medical exam, Hawkins learns he has terminal cancer, but NASA allows him to carry on with the mission.
Once in space, the team rendezvous with the satellite, only to find the Russians have secreted six nuclear missiles inside it. Acting against Corvin's orders, Ethan Grace, a young astronaut accompanying Daedalus, unwittingly activates the missiles on the satellite, which damage Corvin's shuttle. Corvin manages to fix the satellite's guidance system and arrest its descent. He then decides to propel the missiles towards the moon, although there isn't enough fuel in the guidance rocket to do this. Hawkins volunteers to stay with the missiles and fire them so they will crash harmlessly on the moon. Corvin lands the disabled shuttle back on earth.
Review
"I don't know how to break this to you, Frank, but you're an old man." This harsh truth delivered to Frank Corvin, a retired airforce pilot, by his former commander Gerson is intended to deflate his ambition to get into space. Instead it only increases his determination. One can imagine Clint Eastwood, who plays Corvin, faced with the evidence of his own ageing, being similarly provoked. The star is, after all, 70 years old, and sometimes he looks it, the lean features now a little scrawny, the hair wispier. There's courage in facing facts, making a virtue out of necessity.
Eastwood has always liked to poke fun at himself. In The Gauntlet (1977) Sondra Locke's character has a high old time deflating the macho ego of Eastwood's tough-guy cop, while his 1992 Western Unforgiven, in which his character, the elderly William Munny, struggles to mount his horse, anticipates much of the comedy of Space Cowboys. But in mocking his screen persona, Eastwood - who also directs Space Cowboys - avoids undermining its potency. In The Gauntlet he's man enough to get the job done; in Unforgiven he proves more than a match for the brutal Little Bill Daggett. So it is in Space Cowboys. The two earnest young things sent from NASA to persuade Corvin back to the fold (he knows how to fix the guidance system of a broken-down Russian satellite) discover him in flagrante with his wife. There's life in the old dog yet.
And in the other members of Team Daedalus, the crack flying squad which Corvin reunites. Donald Sutherland's O'Neill is still an incorrigible flirt, while Tommy Lee Jones' Hawk flies like a dream and romances a pretty young NASA engineer. Only Sullivan, played by James Garner, seems limited by his failing physique, huffing and puffing round the training track (although he's still a crack robotics expert). Like Eastwood's own production team, here assembled for the umpteenth time, Team Daedalus shows there's no substitute for experience.
Of course, if you've got the "Right Stuff" - the title of Tom Wolfe's influential book about the early years of the US space programme - age would seem to be no impediment. Indeed, Space Cowboys ploughs much the same furrow as Wolfe's work (itself turned into a movie by Philip Kaufman in 1983). As the military-industrial complex grows ever more powerful, so there is a more urgent need to believe it is still dependent on human qualities such as courage and resourcefulness: in other words, cowboy values. Several times Frank is accused of not being a team player, but it's his individualism that sees the mission through. By contrast, the two by-the-book young astronauts accompanying the old-timers are nothing but a liability.
Only one of the quartet, Hawk Hawkins, is overtly identified as a cowboy, introduced by a shot of his fancy boots. But the dividing line between the free spirits and the suits is absolute. It's rather over-egging the pudding that Gerson, up to his neck in the murky world of internal NASA politics, turns out to be covering up for his negligence - Frank's designs were stolen by the KGB while in Gerson's care, and subsequently used in a Soviet satellite - throughout the whole operation. Not that the old guys resist the new; far from it. In an oddly moving moment Hawkins, to whom we are introduced flying a vintage biplane, lovingly strokes the fuselage of a Stealth bomber. And when Frank finally gets to look down on Earth from space, a beatific smile spreads over his face.
Despite the poignancy of old age, the mood of the film is cheerful, sustained by the high spirits of the four veterans. Even Hawkins' terminal illness is played for comedy; in the final sequence Frank and his wife look up at the night sky wondering if Hawk reached his goal; we then cut to a shot of his body lying serenely on the lunar surface as on the soundtrack Frank Sinatra croons 'Fly Me to the Moon'.
Credits
- Director
- Clint Eastwood
- Producers
- Clint Eastwood
- Andrew Lazar
- Screenplay
- Ken Kaufman
- Howard Klausner
- Director of Photography
- Jack N. Green
- Editor
- Joel Cox
- Production Designer
- Henry Bumstead
- Music
- Lennie Niehaus
- ©Warner Bros. (US, Canada, Bahamas & Bermuda)
- ©Village Roadshow Films (BVI) Limited (all other territories)
- Production Companies
- Warner Bros. presents in association with Village Roadshow Pictures/ Clipsal Films a Malpaso production and Mad Chance production
- Executive Producer
- Tom Rooker
- Production Co-ordinator
- Andrew White
- Unit Production Manager
- Patricia Churchill
- Location Manager
- Kokayi Ampah
- Location Liaison
- Donald A. Kincade
- Post-production Co-ordinator
- Karen Shaw
- Aerial Unit/2nd Unit Director
- Craig Hosking
- Assistant Directors
- Robert Lorenz
- Dodi L. Rubenstein
- T. Rooker
- Melissa Cummins Lorenz
- Script Supervisor
- Mable Lawson McCrary
- Casting
- Phyllis Huffman
- Texas/Florida:
- Liz Keigley
- Sari E. Keigley
- Associate:
- Olivia Harris
- Underwater Director of Photography
- Pete Romano
- Camera/Steadicam Operator
- Stephen S. Campanelli
- Additional Camera Operator
- Leo J. Napolitano
- Camera Operator/ Spacecam
- Hans Bjerno
- Visual Effects Supervisor
- Michael Owens
- Special Visual Effects/ Animation
- Industrial Light & Magic
- Special Effects Co-ordinator
- John Frazier
- Special Effects
- Steven E. Bunyea
- Ken Ebert
- Joe Pancake
- Steven Riley
- Dominic V. Ruiz
- John Wonser
- Michael E. Burke
- Gilbert Draper
- Tom Frazier
- Francis Pennington
- Mark Sheaffer
- Dana Wozniak
- Jameson Levin
- Mark Noel
- Russell Nave
- Bruce Hayes
- Jeff A. Denes
- David Amborn
- Dwight Thomas Smith
- Bryan A. Wohlers
- Video/Graphics Supervisor
- Elizabeth Radley
- Video Graphics
- David Watkinson
- Art Director
- Jack G. Taylor Jr
- Lead Set Designer
- Joseph G. Pacelli Jr
- Set Decorator
- Richard Goddard
- Costume Designer
- Deborah Hopper
- Make-up
- Key Artists:
- Tania McComas
- Francisco X. Perez
- Artist:
- Charlene Roberson
- Key Hairstylist
- Carol A. O'Connell
- Hairstylist
- Jan Alexander
- Titles/Opticals
- Pacific Title
- Music Production Supervisor
- Matt Pierson
- Music Editor
- Donald Harris
- Music Scoring Mixer
- Bobby Fernandez
- Soundtrack
- "Espacio" - Mitch Holder; "Patricia" - Pérez Prado; "The Best Is Yet to Come", "Hit the Road, Jack" - Joshua Redman; "Grazin' in the Grass" - Boney James & Rick Braun; "Take It to the Limit" - Chad Brock; "Space Cowboy (Yippie-Yi-Yay)" - *NSYNC; "Last Night" - Larry Goldings featuring Maceo Parker & Fred Wesley; "Old Man" - Brad Mehldau; "Still Crazy after All These Years" (1) - Willie Nelson, (2) - Brad Mehldau Trio; "The Chain of Love" - Clay Walker; "I Only Have Eyes for You" - Alison Eastwood; "Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words)" - Frank Sinatra with Count Basie & His Orchestra
- Sound Design
- Christopher Boyes
- David Farmer
- Sound Mixer
- Walt Martin
- Re-recording Mixers
- Christopher Boyes
- Michael Semanick
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Alan Robert Murray
- Co-supervising Sound Editor
- Bub Asman
- Supervising Dialogue Editor
- Lucy Coldsnow-Smith
- Dialogue Editors
- Kimberly Lowe Voight
- Mildred Iatrou Morgan
- Gloria D'Alessandro
- Sound Effects Editors
- Howard S.M. Neiman
- Gary Krivacek
- Steve Mann
- Glenn Hoskinson
- Jason King
- Anthony R. Milch
- Teresa Eckton
- Ken Fischer
- Phil Benson
- Scott Guitteau
- ADR
- Supervisor:
- Juno J. Ellis
- Mixer:
- Thomas J. O'Connell
- Editors:
- Denise Horta
- Stephen Janisz
- Foley
- Artists:
- Dan O'Connell
- John Cucci
- Mixer:
- James Ashwill
- Supervising Editor:
- Michael Dressel
- Editors:
- Shawn Sykora
- Butch Wolf
- Bob Beher
- NASA Consultant
- Bobbie Faye ferguson
- NASA Technical Advisers
- Robert D. Cabana
- Philip R. West
- Lisa Malone
- Brian Welch
- Rick Hull
- Brian Austin
- Gordon Fullerton
- Laura Rochon
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Buddy Van horn
- Animal Handlers
- Studio Animal Services
- Cast
- Clint Eastwood
- Frank D. Corvin
- Tommy Lee Jones
- Hawk Hawkins
- Donald Sutherland
- Jerry O'Neill
- James Garner
- Tank Sullivan
- James Cromwell
- Bob Gerson
- Marcia Gay Harden
- Sara Holland
- William Devane
- Eugene Davis
- Loren Dean
- Ethan Grace
- Courtney B. Vance
- Roger Hines
- Rade Sherbedgia
- General Vostov
- Barbara Babcock
- Barbara Corvin
- Blair Brown
- Doctor Anne Caruthers
- Jay Leno
- himself
- Nils Allen Stewart
- Tiny
- Deborah Jolly
- cocktail waitress
- Toby Stephens
- young Frank D. Corvin
- Eli Craig
- young Hawk Hawkins
- John Asher
- young Jerry O'Neill
- Matt McColm
- young Tank Sullivan
- Billie Worley
- young Bob Gerson
- Chris Wylde
- Jason
- Anne Stedman
- Jason's girlfriend
- James MacDonald
- Capcom
- Kate Mcneil
- Karen Mistal
- female astronauts
- John K. Linto
- male astronaut 1
- Mark Thomason
- mission control tech
- Georgia Emelin
- Jerry's girlfriend
- Rick Scarry
- State Department official
- Paul Pender
- JBC security guard
- Tim Halligan
- Qualls
- Manning Mpinduzi-Mott
- 1958 press reporter
- Steve Monroe
- waiter
- J.M. Henry
- centrifuge tech
- Steven West
- construction tech
- Cooper Huckabee
- trajectory engineer
- Hayden Tank
- Andrew
- Jock MacDonald
- press reporter
- Gerald Emerick
- T-38 pilot
- Reneé Olstead
- little girl
- Don Michaelson
- NASA doctor
- Artur Cybulski
- press reporter 2
- Gordon Owens
- Simsupe
- Steve Stapenhorst
- vice president
- Lauren Cohn
- teacher
- Michael Louden
- young pilot 1
- Deborah Hope
- female engineer
- Jon Hamm
- young pilot 2
- Lamont Lofton
- KSC guard
- Alexander Kuznetsov
- Russian engineer
- Erica Grant
- female engineer
- Certificate
- PG
- Distributor
- Warner Bros Distributors (UK)
- 11,731 feet
- 130 minutes 21 seconds
- Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS
- Colour/Prints by
- Technicolor
- 2.35:1 [Panavision]