SPACE COWBOYS (2000) *** Clint Eastwood accomplished what he set out to do, and what more can a director/star ask for than that? Part Greek tragedy, part comic book, part soap opera, it's an empathetic nod to the American guys of the WWII generation. I don't know what it would have cost in contempo-dollars to assemble this cast twenty-five years ago...Clint still delivers the big lines with a snarl that makes you start, and then laugh...Tommy Lee Jones is absolutely perfect as Hawk the greatest southern pilot of them all, Donald Sutherland is still your most easily typecast nut, and James Garner is almost passable for a Baptist preacher with hula girls on his tie...and how much closer than that can you get? I keep confusing William Devane with Rich Little, but he's good too. Of course it turns out that these guys' special mixture of knowledge, guts, and non-conformity is still needed, that a pencil-necked bureacrat really was in with the Russians the entire time, that the Russians really were up to no good, that MIT grads really aren't too street smart, and that the chicks dig aging rugged individualists. Love interests abound, but none are given any more time than necessary (i.e. forty seconds) to develop at the expense of losing the macho edge off of any of the characters. The eclectic musical selections work nicely and somehow come off in an understated manner (yes, even the cowboy rap)...a pattern that maybe they should have broken just once: I would have had a cowboy/rock number in the style of Bon Jovi's songs inspired by Young Guns II for the scene where Tommy Lee straps himself to the six Russian missiles and heads for the moon.
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