Space Cowboys ► 3.5 / 5 (Eastwood's Hollywood)

.. the not so right stuff

[your rating for the movie]

  It is fate, I guess, that first led me to see the marvelous 'The Right Stuff', before this Eastwood's idea of what may have become of those brash, uber-confident, womanizing, cowboy-pilots. This movie takes off right where The Right Stuff lets go. The latter was an 'experimental-epic'. A newness in the genre of science, drama and even humor. Semi-sadly, Eastwood's venture is a semi-experimental, non-epic. There is much of a muchness and the same of a sameness. Much of it is the lack of scientific verity and content. The context, though, is intriguing. Factually, the United States sent a chimp to space before men. There must been some incredulity and frustration for those pilots dreaming to be the first American in space. This movie starts with a fiction behind the incident, based on some history.

Feelin' lucky punk?

  The fiction is that the boss, Bob Gerson (James Cromwell) doesn't like the attitude and bravura of the pilots, Hawk Hawkins (Tommy Lee Jones) and Frank Corvin (Clint Eastwood). He heads a team Daedalus, which has these two and a couple more, Tank Sullivan (James Garner) and Jerry O'Neill (Donald Sutherland). He upstages their space-career by ending all military/air-force involvement with space-race and closing the Daedalus. In reality, this was handed over to a 'civilian' agency - NASA, and many military personnel, esp. pilots, went on to work there as engineers, administrators and astronauts. We later see Bob in an administrative capacity. No such luck for these guys as they finish their career entirely in the corps (think Chuck Yeager).

Toby ~ the young Clint

  This lays the setup for another one. Now, we find these cow-boys have become cow-grandads and Clint is wanted by NASA to help them fix a satellite, a Russian one to boot. There's a logical macguffin as to why only he can do that job. Conveniently for him, it requires space-walk and astronaut-ing. He demands from his ex-boss Bob, who is now managing this affair, that the good ol' Daedalus must be brought in. Ofcourse, he agrees or else the setup for the setup would have no purpose in the movie. The good ol' team is back in place and training at NASA to be astronauts, which leads to some humorous situations and then some. Launched into space they find more details about the weird nature of the macguffin job and the Russian satellite. It's a sinister twist and, well, anyone who loved Bond's Golden Eye could have made quite a good guess here, I suppose.

  I want to specially mention Toby Stephens (Die Another Day, Mangal Pandey) as the young Clint Eastwood, who not only looks uncannily like his younger version but gets his mannerisms and expressions to a T. Would have loved to see a bit more of him. Ingeniously, for his voice, Clint dubs as his younger self, and so do the other three, which completes the illusion.

    Coming back to the problem I have with the film - the spacewalking and shuttle sequences, esp. the latter. There is a beautiful sequence whence, whilst space-walking, the astronauts 'fall' over the continents in orbit and the shot captures them to be seemingly hovering over the earth. Otherwise, the magic of the space journey is destroyed for anyone who's even a little familiar with how they work, esp. after viewing a landmark movie like the Apollo 13.

Imagine me up there..

  There is an especially painful scene wherein we see the old geezers extinguishing a fire inside the shuttle with a good ol' extinguisher as if in a barbecue. Fire is at it's worst in a zero-gravity space environment. It spreads over all surfaces, as a 360 degree spherical burst, since it cannot burn 'up' when there's no 'down' in space. The geriatric subjects also potter about as if in a barn with apparently no regard to a zero-gravity environment. The only way I, personally, was able to sit through them all were due to the good and expected performances by these seasoned actors. A high school student can tear those space sequences to pieces with the science he learns. There are some NASA consultants mentioned in the credits at the end and I wonder if they cringed seeing these. They have sinned by omission. Nevertheless, it's not all a lost cause, and I can only wonder what a beaut this movie could have turned out to be if they got those effects or science right considering the good acting and plot, which is usually the casualty in most movies.

We can hardly run and dammit if you strap us on rocket..

  I researched a bit after the movie and found that Clint didn't want to use the 'vomit comet' that was offered by NASA to shoot zero-gravity sequences. He, thoughtfully, feared the ol' cowboys kicking the bucket before he could film a bucket full of rolls. Nevertheless, it shows in those scenes and it disappointed me greatly. When I saw as a young kid, I imagined the 'Apollo 13' crew to either have gone to a space station to film those amazing scenes inside the spacecraft or perhaps all brilliantly computer-generated. It was an immense surprise, although logical, that these were filmed inside an airplane that free-falls towards the earth from a high altitude. Clint could have tried the vfx route at the least. This was well before his now Spielberg-ian days and the Dreamworks backing, and maybe there were some budgetary constraints. One only has to see the beginning of 'Hereafter' and fully understand the technical quality Steven brings to Clint's films.

Sara Holland: I have never met a kid who didn't dream of being an astronaut when he grew up.
Col. William 'Hawk' Hawkins: Did you ever meet a kid who didn't grow up?

  Anyhow, this movie isn't about the vfx or the brilliant space journeys but all about the heart. It's a salute to the magnificent 'The Right Stuff'. We see a paper headline in the mid of the film teasing the team Daedalus as the 'Ripe stuff'. Being ripe as it may be, it's strength lies in the fact that this is a Clint's creation and it's his team. They get the job done and in style. The script doesn't turn manipulative despite it's contrived and feel-good ending. The whole film reaches out with kindness and humor as only our grandpas can provide. It's a compliment, which this endeavor deserves fairly. Maybe this would've been better on the big screen than catching it on the dvd.

Cowboyz Forever (|| -|

The Right Stuff (1983) 4.6 / 5

'The Stuff of the Right Spirit'

[your rating for the movie]
  There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate..
  The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man could ever pass. They called it the sound barrier..
 
  One of the very first lines heard in the film, that set the tone for the odyssey ahead. The film essays the real lives, joys and heroism of the men who braved death, to break the 'sound barrier' at the Andrews air force base, and then, the beginnings of the American Space program in the Mercury missions (the precursor to the Apollo). This movie is right there with all those classics of the 80's such as the Raging Bull, E.T., Platoon, Mississippi Burning etc., and possible inspiration for equally good space tales such as the Apollo 13. Viewing this movie on DVD, I crave to see this on a bigger screen. Nevertheless, the film doesn't indulge in grand moments or glamorous shots as often as such stories tend to. It does the more difficult task of showing the poignant, personal stories of the bravura pilots and the eager astronauts.
  

The astro-nuts (actors) before the mercury capsule

Directed by Philip Kaufman (The unbearable lightness of Being, Henry & June), the movie has the career-making performances of the then several new-comers and present stars.
Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager,
Scott Glenn as Alan Shepherd,
Ed Harris as John Glenn,
Dennis Quaid as Gordon Cooper,
Fred Ward as Gus Grissom,
Scott Paulin as Deke Slayton,
Charles Frank as Scott Carpenter,
Lance Henriksen as Wally Schirra - the astronauts / pilots;
other such as
Barbara Hershey as Glennis Yeager,
Kim Stanley as Pancho Barnes, etc. make up other wonderful supporting roles.
Jeff Goldblum leaves his mark in the few scenes he appears and ofcourse, is quite a young chap here.
 

Sam Shepard & Chuck Yeager

  The unique tell of the movie is the 'spirit' in which the tale unfolds. There is the unusual undercurrent of the humorous along with the macho manner in which these good fellows tackle the embarrassment of challenges. You read right, embarrassments. These pilots do not have a personality to see events as failures. Only embarrassed to have met it. They know only one way to live - to win.

  It is an engrossing experience to see people who are essentially farm-hands and cowboys take the mantle of the Space Program. One of the pivotal scenes occur at the beginning when Chuck Yeager sees the test of the X1 Bell series experimental airplane, riding on his horse about the base. The shot contrasts the earthiness of the man who will tame the beast that will soar the sky to be the first in history to break the sound barrier.  

  These fellows are all charmers and heroes in their own right but I would single out a couple who come across best. Sam Shepard has the screen persona like the inimitable Blondie played by Clint Eastwood. Chuck in his interview, I read, while speaking about Sam's performance, said that he (Sam) acts like he(Chuck) flies.

Dennis Quaid as Gordon Cooper

My favorite of the lot though is Gordon Cooper played by Dennis. The first man to have slept soundly in the vastness of the space alone in his Mercury capsule, exhibits a rustic charm with unassuming brashness. Think Johnny Bravo meets G.I. Joe. Easily, the best role of Dennis' career I've come across yet. He admires Chuck and infact many pilots, then and now, considered him the best. Strangely, he(Chuck) never got chosen by NASA, for stupid, bureaucratic reasons. Hence, his story runs parallel to the lucky ones who get chosen to be blown up sky high on a rocket.

  Kaufman in this movie creates a unique genre that could be termed 'Experimental Epic',

The Real Nuts

as suggested by Ebert. It is engrossing yet laid back. Wholesome yet has several characters jostling in the screen to give you their story. An epic yet a personal tale of human lives and a heroic dedication of a group, that borders on the naiveté. No doubt a unique and refreshing film, I had no qualms with the some little contrivances such as the semi-comical German scientists of the Space program (I wonder if the chief scientist who has a comic interlude with Sen. Lyndon Johnson about Spe-ci-men/Spa-ce-men, represents Von Braun, creator of Saturn V and other gigantor rocket engines).

  Evidently, a movie I highly recommend to all film buffs and is the only one so far to have equaled the rating received by The Dark Knight in this blog.

'No Bucks, No Buck Rogers'