Battlestar geriatrica

>> Space Cowboys is Clint's meditation on age

by MATTHEW HAYS

With his latest film, Space Cowboys, Clint Eastwood's intentions are right there in the title. He's collapsing the Western and the science-fiction film into one, as a way of confirming that old adage about all sci-fi films really just being Westerns in disguise.

Our space cowboys are four spunky old dudes (Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, James Garner and Donald Sutherland), who were a kickass military pilot unit in the late '50s, but were effectively screwed over for astronaut consideration by an evil bureaucrat. We're shown these scenes in flashback, and we know we're in a flashback because the black and white footage tells us so. Also, we know who the stars' younger incarnations are, because the stars themselves do the voiceovers for the younger actors, giving this sequence a bizarre ventriloquist feeling.

Cut to today, and it seems NASA is in trouble. A military satellite is threatening to crash to earth, and it's a biggy, so it could cause all sorts of problems upon entry. But Eastwood and company, now in their late 60s and early 70s, are the only ones familiar with this system and are thus the only ones who can do the repair work necessary (this fine detail is never fully explained, but no mind).

Space Cowboys unfolds as one might expect. It's sort of a cross between Cocoon and Armageddon and the last couple of Star Trek films before they offed Kirk. There are plenty of we're-not-getting-older-we're-getting-better gags, which, surprisingly, are less offensive and irritating than one might have expected. There are some obligatory romantic subplots, and an evil bureaucrat conveniently making way for some emotional outbursts from Eastwood, who goes all Dirty

Harry on the guy's ass.

Unfortunately, Eastwood does fall into the trap of too much schmaltz. (What is up with so many filmmakers' need to blast the Mormon Tabernacle Choir whenever people jettison into space?) And while I'm a huge fan of the director/star, I must say, comedy isn't his greatest forte. I'd much rather see Clint blow someone away with a Magnum, for example, than slip on a banana peel. Space Cowboys isn't terrible or anything, but it's certainly no Unforgiven, and in a sense, it's trying to do a similar thing: meditate on Clint's aging persona. At best, Space Cowboys is simply a passable senior pride movie. :

Space Cowboys opens Friday, August 4