Clint Eastwood has been directing and infrequently starring in fall films for the higher a part of the previous quarter-century. Nearly all the pieces he’s made since 2003’s Mystic River has been launched in that awards-movie hall between September and late December, and even when the flicks themselves didn’t turn into Oscar tasks, they tended to have an elegiac, autumnal tone befitting a filmmaker so attuned to the nuances of ageing, regrets, and American tragedy. However in his (relative) youth, Clint Eastwood used to make summer season films — common entertainments within the pre-superhero period. Consistent with his later-period tendency towards films that work as farewells to genres, historic eras, and himself, his August 2000 movie Area Cowboys feels, with 25 years of hindsight, like his farewell to the normal mass-appeal summer season film.
Sure, technically Blood Work from 2002 was Eastwood’s final starring automobile to obtain a summer season launch within the custom of Escape from Alcatraz, Within the Line of Hearth, Firefox, Tightrope, and Pale Rider, amongst others. However Blood Work, enjoyable as it’s, is a reasonably commonplace potboiler with some gentle Eastwoodian reckoning over mortality. Area Cowboys, in the meantime, expertly adopts a then-recent summer season film standby: the space adventure/disaster. Eastwood performs Frank Corvin, a pilot for the U.S. Air Pressure who, alongside along with his outdated teammates Hawk (Tommy Lee Jones), Jerry (Donald Sutherland), and Tank (James Garner), was as soon as a contender for space-flight missions earlier than NASA got here alongside and squeezed them out. (They’re humiliated by a press convention trotting out a chimp that may get the test-flight glory.) A long time later, Frank is known as upon to help a youthful group with the restore of a broken Soviet satellite tv for pc. He parlays NASA’s desperation right into a full area flight for his outdated group, which turns right into a a lot greater mission that should forestall an unintended missile launch. Mainly, it’s Deep Influence or Armageddon for patrons of the early-bird particular.
It’s typical of Eastwood’s pursuits as a filmmaker and a star that, quite than a rag-tag band of oil-rig roughnecks or a best-and-bravest on a last-minute mission, his model of this film includes a quartet of comfy outdated execs whose primary obstacles are their bickering and their unconventional ages, each of which will be handily overcome by sheer professionalism. Early on, Frank makes use of his experience to demand a shot at area journey from his former supervisor Bob (James Cromwell). When Bob hesitates to strike a deal, Frank points a basic later-period Eastwoodism with a smile beneath that satisfying rasp: “Clock’s ticking, Bob. And I’m solely getting older.”
Because it turned out, Eastwood would get a lot older, later changing into the uncommon actor to star in a film in his 90s. In comparison with Cry Macho, Eastwood is in spring-chicken mode right here (nicely, possibly summer season hen). Whereas it’s been spectacular to see one of many world’s nice film stars dedicate himself to the craft of directing — and making an attempt to make sense of latest American historical past whereas doing so — the Eastwood of Area Cowboys understands the crowd-pleasing attraction of letting older stars take one other shot at glory. It’s nearly like Eastwood caught his personal efficiency Within the Line of Hearth (which he didn’t direct, and the place he additionally performs a authorities worker named Frank with a defining early-’60s crossroad) on cable and thought, let me strive to do this myself.
And he does, dammit, outshining each Deep Influence and Armageddon within the course of. As a director of film stars performing misfit antics, Eastwood has a lighter contact than Michael Bay. Granted, that’s not an uncommon distinction, however an outdated hand like Clint helps the extra comedian coaching scenes with Jones, Garner, and Sutherland making an attempt to rise up to NASA velocity really feel genial and welcoming, quite than sweaty and condescending within the type of the numerous senior-quartet comedies that adopted (Final Vegas; E-book Membership). Tommy Lee Jones has finished loads of mainstream films to complement his extra critical tasks through the years, typically clearly clocking in for a paycheck. Right here, his flintiness feels genuinely soulful because the crew member most impressed to take inventory of his life. He’s practically as distinctive a presence as Eastwood himself.
As soon as the group truly will get into orbit, the classical vibe of Eastwood’s directing type turns into a surprisingly good match for an effects-heavy sci-fi-adjacent story. Relatively than chopping by his pictures in an insecure frenzy to gin up apocalyptic pressure, Eastwood offers the area surroundings room to breathe (and actually, the Industrial Mild and Magic visible results nonetheless look stable a quarter-century later). He and longtime cinematographer Jack N. Inexperienced shoot outer area not not like how they may strategy Western landscapes: with an appreciation for the pure magnificence and thriller the characters are risking their lives to expertise. It’s a space-mission film that maintains a poignant sense of marvel that flashier footage typically rush proper by.
Area Cowboys doesn’t in the end do for a last area mission what Eastwood’s fellow August launch Unforgiven did for a last gunslinging task eight years earlier (which is to say, revisit a well-recognized style in an effort to interrogate our assumptions about it). It’s not even fairly as pulpily satisfying as Within the Line of Hearth, which exploited its connection to Nineteen Sixties historical past extra shamelessly and subsequently extra entertainingly. However it’s proper consistent with different summer season entertainments Eastwood directed through the years, and downright soothing for anybody hoping to look at an astronaut thriller that isn’t beset with bombast, monsters, or area insanity. Like Eastwood’s latest authorized thriller Juror No. 2, it’s a film so well-made that its implausibilities by no means stick. Area Cowboys solely appears to be like higher with age — and unlucky shortage.
