When viewing a Clint movie (or any movie which features an iconic living legend), it is customary to lapse into that prejudicial state of mind, "Well, it's a good movie - for Clint fans"; or to take into account the director's age and history and prime yourself to surrender a lot of leeway as a long-time fan of this auteur: maybe excusing him for weak plot lines, lame effects, arrogant dialog and behavior which only Clint can get away with, dodgy action due to his age (will his fight scenes, running scenes, LOVE SCENES look normal or just plain weird?)... all these things and more, you are willing to forgive, for he IS - The Clint. Twenty minutes into Space Cowboys and you are so engrossed in what is a tension-filled, hilarious (in that laconic Clint way), action-packed, au courant film, that all those excuses are thrown out with the corporate hotdog that tastes like underpant. How could we have doubted him?

For any who might opine, "Not bad for a 70-year-old director... considering", let me dispel any and all prejudices fixated upon this Master of American Cinema, for, notwithstanding a few flaws and a heady initial suspension of disbelief to ignite the plot, this movie stands as a minor masterpiece in its own right.

Paced as casually as only Clint can pace movies, yet loaded with the excitement that a master storyteller can instill in his characters through their foibles and humanity (albeit in a superhuman sorta way), at an age when you would imagine this autumnal actor/director to lay back and wallow in some maudlin movie about heartbreak (oops! - he already did that in Madison County), here he is piloting the Space Shuttle and saving the world!

Notwithstanding the above plaudits, there are inconsistencies. The storyline presented a unique rescue situation and if this incident were to occur in real life, you'd undoubtedly question the integrity of a space agency that would allow out-of-shape sexagenarians into billion-dollar taxpayer equipment. But if you could swallow that monkey, the rest of the film would flow. Writers Kaufman & Klausner stretched the limits of plausibility, sure, yet kept our suspension of disbelief on the Sensible side of Reality, as opposed to bloated, fantasy-carcasses like Armageddon or Mission To Mars, or - the worst of the lot - Red Planet, which threw all plausibility to the pigs and decided to nakedly insult audience intelligence yet again in the quest to sell overpriced popcorn.

Clint has found a remarkable look-alike in his young stand-in for the 1958 sequences, Toby Stephens - one wonders whether Clint could actually make a present-day Man With No Name picture with Toby in the lead role and with CLINT directing! Stranger things have happened - look at this movie's plot.

Look up Russian Character Actor in the dictionary - there's a picture of Rade Sherbedgia. In this film, he provides the furry face of Russia; someone to direct nationalistic post-cold-war apathy at.

Eastwood's penchant for giving the viewer the scope of the LOCALE where the action is taking place (a device he inherited from mentor Don Siegel - camera panning back and up and away from final scenes, an Eastwood trademark) is given unbounded reign due to this movie's 'location' - for someone who revels in conveying the sense that his film characters are part of greater cogs, this film presented Clint with the greatest cog of all as the backdrop locale - planet Earth! Though we are well aware the outer space milieu is not Clint's forte, he handles these sequences with such care, dexterity and attention to detail that he escalates the grandeur of being in earth orbit to a scale that rivals the best films ever made in this genre. When the shuttle crew embark on their first EVA (Extra-Vehicular Activity) there is no desperate director's need to 'get to the action' before the audience gets bored - rather, Clint, floating in space, turns in awe to watch the earth roll by beneath him; William Devane, at Houston Control, adds simply, "Welcome to space, Frank". The Clint is joined by The Sutherland, and they take a beat to watch Italy and Western Europe float by... MAGNIFICENT!

Later, as their Space Shuttle is re-entering Earth's atmosphere blanket, Clint gives us long shots of the earth and the miniscule shuttle, as a speck upon the turning globe, soundlessly starting to burn on re-entry; the solitude, the quiet majesty, the obliviousness of this WORLD as a jot of man-created steel comes falling from orbit.

And then that 'greater cog' technique is reversed in the final scene, as the camera zooms in on the moon surface, skims across a crater and then closes in on an outcrop of rock, behind which Tommy Lee Jones has spent his final living minutes facing earth. One of the most superb ending sequences ever shot, poignantly backed by Sinatra's Fly Me To The Moon.

For overall entertainment value, with the four main stars (Eastwood, Jones, Garner and Sutherland) effortlessly providing the heart of the movie's camaraderie, I think many Clint fans might agree that as a 'Clint Movie', Space Cowboys rates higher than quite a few from his catalog: Firefox, Pink Cadillac, City Heat, Paint Your Wagon, Joe Kidd; even movies like Eiger Sanction or Escape From Alcatraz, which have lost a certain bite over the passage of time.

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