Leofwine_draca SPACE COWBOYS is an astronaut picture with a simple premise: a quartet of old-timers are sent up into space to repair an old-fashioned satellite whose technology is so obsolete that they are the only ones who know how to fix it. Interest is piqued by the presence of Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, and Jim Garner in the cast, and the addition of Eastwood himself as director. How could the film be bad with all that talent behind it? The answer lies in the script. This is an oddly uninvolving story that's never quite sure what it wants to be. There's plenty of humour and the natural camaraderie between the old-timers works well; it's great to see these guys on the screen again. The attempts at high drama and action don't work so well, however, and there's never a real sense of danger coming from the predicament. The dated CGI effects don't help much either. This is better than GRAVITY, although not by much; somehow Hollywood seem to struggle a bit with making convincing astronaut movies.

Stanley Jackson 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.

richieandsam SPACE COWBOYSI thought this movie was a lot of fun.The movie is about a group of retired engineers who were due to go into space when they were young, but was replaced by a monkey. Now they are pensioners and they have been called to rescue a satellite that is heading towards Earth. Finally, they get to go into space.The movie had some really funny moments. The story was really good and even though this is a comedy, it also had some serious moments.The movie stars Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland & James Garner. The casting was brilliant. They seemed to have a great relationship and their connection was brilliant. My favourite character was Jerry, played by Donald Sutherland. He was so funny... blind as a bat, but always flirting with the girls that were half his age. He made me laugh.Right at the beginning if the movie, you saw the characters when they were young. Everyone dubbed their voices over these younger actors so that you could believe it was their younger selves... it was really well done. Toby Stephens played a young Clint Eastwood... and I have to say he did a fantastic job. The fake mole on his face looked terrible, but his facial expressions were spot on. He actually looked like a young Clint.The effects were not always great, but i think in this film that made it all the better. I loved it when they got to space and the views and landscapes were lovely.I also really liked the ending... it was a good finish.I will give this film 7 out of 10.A lot of fun to watch and it looked like everyone had a good time making this film. For more reviews, please like my Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ordinary-Person-Movie- Reviews/456572047728204?ref=hl

museumofdave There are two kinds of Clint Eastwood movies--the hard, intense, high-energy driven films that create box-office buzz, and the easy-going creations such as Bronco Billy and The Bridges of Madison county, where the old pro relaxes and lets his adult viewers do likewise. This film about four old pals recruited to zoom into space on an emergency mission is likable, easy-going, and its fun to see guys like Tommy Lee Jones and Donald Sutherland relax and let us enjoy a film without cars exploding every five minutes or pools of blood collecting every time a door is opened. This is a movie that Eastwood probably could have directed in his sleep, but it will keep you entertained and awake.