Space Cowboys (2000)

Some over-the-hill ex-astronauts are called on for assistance. Though they are only wanted to help train Frank Corvin (Clint Eastwood) wants more than that. He's gathered "the old gang"--both literally and figuratively--and he wants them all to have one last hurrah.It is a movie with humor, drama and suspense. It's a swipe at all those who would believe that once you reach a certain age then you're done. It's a victory to all those who are considered "old" yet still have the mind and the body to be productive. Sure, they're not what they used to be but that's not to say they're used up.

Plot; Four pre-NASA era test pilots are called back into service to help repair a Cold War era Russian satellite before it crashes back to earth.There are many instances where Space Cowboys is actually less plausible than the absurd (but entertaining) Michael Bay film Armageddon (with which it shares some tangential elements and qualities). But under the deft direction of star Clint Eastwood and a the rock solid cast around him (including Tommy Lee Jones, James Garner, Donald Sutherland, Marcia Gay Harden, James Cromwell, Courtney B. Vance and the always welcome William Devane), it all holds together and touches down for a smooth landing.

This is a joy of a movie. Light, very light amusement, but made but with pleasant enthusiasm and irony. Sure, the actors go overboard. When Donald Sutherland shows his fake fake-teeth, when Tommy Lee Jones' tears start to flow every time his wife is mentioned... gross. But hey, this is a feelgood movie and so what. Four egos, for lead actors, and still there seems to be real chemistry. A steady roll of jokes well told, ironic situations, soft spots exposed keeps the viewer amused while the big question is: will they go up in space? Cleverly plotted out, this story. Sure, drumming up befriended senior actors for action encores is becoming a formula in itself, but so what if done well. Where Clint Eastwood formally has the lead role, it is Tommy Lee Jones who gets the love interest. And Donald Sutherland gets the prize for most obvious flirts with the camera, Interestingly, Will Devane shows much character development is his role as the man from mission control, he outshines the main actors in the last part of the story. It even gets exciting up there in space. Well done. Incidentally, Chris Nolan's widely acclaimed mega-production Interstellar was showing on TV the evening I watched this. Why that movie is an 8,5 and this one a meager 5,5 I just don't understand...

This review covers an 'emotional' event at the climax of the movie 'Space Cowboys' which, I believe, reveals either the creative team's woeful ignorance of a few basic principles of physics or their contempt towards their audience with a 'well - they are too ignorant to know the difference so let's include it!' mentality. This relates to Tommy Lee Jones's character, Hawk, falling towards the Moon due to its gravitational field before dying, propped up against a rock, having finally achieved his long-awaited goal of reaching the lunar surface.It is implied that, once the spaceship was closer to the Moon than the Earth, namely just past halfway through their journey, the greater gravitational field of the Moon would cause him to fall towards it rather than towards the Earth. This, however, is manifestly untrue, due to the significantly greater mass of the Earth than the Moon. Given that the Earth's mass is approximately 80 times that of the Moon and gravitational field strength is directly proportional to mass and inversely proportional to distance squared, it is a simple mathematical exercise to show that the point where the two field strengths are equal is actually the square root of 80 (approximately 9) times further from Earth than the Moon. In other words, the spaceship would need to be 90% of the way from the Earth to the Moon, with only 10% of the distance still to go, before the gravitational 'pull' of the Moon upon an object exceeds that of the Earth's 'pull'.A simple analogous comparison can be made between this and the gravitational attraction on Earth compared with that of a small permanent magnet. Because the former is much stronger than the latter, a small iron paper clip, on Earth, would fall downwards rather than 'leap' upwards towards a small magnet held 1 metre above it. If, however, the magnet was only 1 centimetre above the paper clip, instead of 1 metre, the greater strength of the magnetic field, due to the smaller distance between the magnet and the paper clip, than the gravitational field exerted by the Earth would cause it to move upwards.Therefore, the spaceship needed to be much closer to the Moon - and therefore further from the Earth - for Hawk's fall to be physically possible, but I assume that this would not have fitted in with the simple 'oh they are halfway there - that will be close enough!' idea employed in the movie.This leads onto a second problem that I have with this part of the movie: Hawk's landing on the surface of the Moon. He uses an escape pod with no apparent facility to control its rate of descent to travel in, which would make the experience similar to plummeting towards the surface of the Earth without a parachute. On the positive side, the Moon is lighter than the Earth, so the rate of acceleration during the descent would be less than if the mass of the Moon was equal to that of the Earth; however, on the negative side, as the Moon has no atmosphere, there would be no air resistance to act against the acceleration caused by this gravitational attraction. There would therefore be no terminal velocity reached and Hawk's craft would probably hit the surface of the Moon harder than if he had fallen and landed - without the benefit of a parachute - from an aeroplane 10 miles above the Earth's surface. A much faster death, admittedly, than slow death by cancer, but not the version shown at the end of the movie!In fantasy or Sci-Fi movies I am happy for the laws of science to be modified, and for wormholes in time, spaceships moving at warp speed and men able to fly wearing red capes to proliferate, but for a plot ostensibly set in the 'real' world - Armstrong, Glenn and Shepard all get a name check after all! - the 'real' laws of science need to be obeyed for the story to be credible. In my opinion, when this is not the case the movie as a whole suffers as a consequence.