Space Cowboys Review

Back in 1958, before the establishment of NASA, four young pilots worked on America`s new space programme - but were shunted aside. Now Frank Corvin, Clint Eastwood, and his team are needed again, because a Russian satellite - which is using the outmoded technology Corvin had designed 40 years ago - is in trouble and has to be rescued - the old-timers find themselves training to be astronauts... As the title suggests, this isn`t a film to be taken too seriously. Clint Eastwood has fun playing his age and working alongside veterans like James Garner and Donald Sutherland - Tommy Lee Jones is conspicuously, distractingly, too young for his role. But having set up a terrific premise, Eastwood, surprisingly, doesn`t make the most of it. The film gets bogged down in the long training scenes, though it picks up for the rousing finale which contains a few unexpected elements. Eastwood plays his familiar anti- authoritarian character, a renegade cowboy whose own integrity is unshakable; he`s one of the most enaging actors of his generation, and, as a director, he once again proves he`s willing to play with genres. This is not his best work, but it`s a lot of fun.