Space Cowboys *** (2000, Clint Eastwood, Donald Sutherland, James Garner, Tommy Lee Jones) – Classic Movie Review 1459

Co-producer/director Clint Eastwood joins Donald Sutherland, James Garner and Tommy Lee Jones as the stars of his 2000 movie. They play a team of ageing pilots who get the chance to fulfil their lifelong dream of travelling into space.

With Eastwood at the helm, and these stars aboard, it’s creaky and cheesy but great fun. Eastwood plays Dr Frank Corvin, a retired space engineer who is asked to save a troubled satellite. So he calls on his ancient old buddies Colonel Hawk Hawkins (Jones), Jerry O’Neill (Sutherland) and Tank Sullivan (Garner) to help him out on a journey into space.

But first, the old guys somehow have to get through the training and physicals…

It’s a good-looking movie, with smart cinematography by Jack N Green, handsome set designs by Henry Bumstead and convincing special visual effects by Industrial Light & Magic.

James Cromwell, Marcia Gay Harden, William Devane, Loren Dean, Courtney B Vance, Barbara Babcock, Blair Brown, Jay Leno, Deborah Jolly and Toby Stephens are in a fine cast.

James Garner, best known for his charming, wry anti-heroes in TV’s The Rockford Files and Maverick died on 19 July 2014, aged 86. He recovered from a quintuple heart bypass in 1998 but suffered a stroke in 2008.

His cinema roles include The Thrill of It All (1963), Move Over, Darling (1963), The Great Escape (1963), The Americanization of Emily (1964), Grand Prix (1966), Support Your Local Sheriff!(1969), Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971), Sunset, Victor/Victoria (1982), Murphy’s Romance (1985) which earned him a Best Actor Oscar nomination, Tank, Twilight, Maverick (1994), My Fellow Americans (1996), Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and The Notebook.

He received an Emmy nomination for best actor in Maverick in 1959 and won an Emmy as private investigator Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files in 1977.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1459

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