Movie · 2000 · Action, Adventure, Thriller · 2h 10m · PG-13 · English
Curator score: 3.4/10 (129.6K ratings)
Space will never be the same.
Overview
Frank Corvin, ‘Hawk’ Hawkins, Jerry O'Neill and ‘Tank’ Sullivan were hotdog members of Project Daedalus, the US Air Force's test program for space travel, but their hopes were dashed in 1958 with the formation of NASA and the use of trained chimps. They blackmail their way into orbit when Russia's mysterious ‘Ikon’ communications satellite's orbit begins to degrade and threatens to crash to Earth.
Ratings
Curator score: 3.4/10
IMDb: 6.5/10
Letterboxd: 3.09/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 78%
Metacritic: 73
TMDB: 6.4/10
Director
Clint Eastwood
Production
Village Roadshow Pictures, Malpaso Productions, Mad Chance, Clipsal Films, Warner Bros. Pictures
Cast
Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, James Garner, James Cromwell, Marcia Gay Harden, William Devane, Loren Dean, Courtney B. Vance, Barbara Babcock, Rade Šerbedžija, Blair Brown, James MacDonald, Jon Hamm, Toby Stephens, Anne Stedman, Jay Leno, Nils Allen Stewart, Eli Craig, John Asher
Curator Review
Verdict
A creaky but likable late-career crowd-pleaser: part old-guys-on-a-mission adventure, part wistful meditation on aging, regret, and second chances. The effects and ensemble chemistry carry it more than the plotting, but if you’re open to corny humor and a mellow, hands-on sci-fi vibe, it has charm.
Best for
fans of ensemble adventure movies
viewers who like aging-hero stories
people in the mood for light, nostalgic sci-fi
audiences who enjoy practical, nuts-and-bolts spaceflight details
Skip if
you want hard sci-fi or technical realism
you dislike corny dad-joke humor
you prefer fast-paced blockbuster spectacle
you’re impatient with long runtimes and sentimental detours
Overview
Space Cowboys is exactly the kind of movie that knows its audience: older stars, familiar banter, and a fantasy of getting one more shot at the big mission. It’s broad and occasionally cheesy, but the cast sells the camaraderie and the film’s affection for competence, stubbornness, and old-school professionalism.
Worth noting
What gives it more weight than a simple novelty premise is the melancholy underneath it. The movie keeps circling back to time, obsolescence, and the idea that unfinished dreams don’t disappear just because the body starts to fail. That gives the jokes and action a slightly elegiac edge.
Bottom line
It’s not a great space movie, but it is a pleasant one, with enough practical detail and ensemble warmth to make the journey easy to take. If you want a polished blockbuster, look elsewhere; if you want a mellow, slightly shaggy late-life adventure, it lands.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Will Menaker (3★) · 397 likes
Clint directs and stars in movie about how NASA sends four medicare recipients into space to prove once and for all that computers are gay and old men can still lay pipe.
Clint, Garner, Donald Sutherland, and Tommy Lee Jones doing dick jokes and astronaut stuff? What's not to like? Plus we get James Cromwell as the bad guy and William Devane and Tommy Lee reunited for the first time since their last adventure together in Paul Schrader's Rolling Thunder!
theriverjordan (2★) · 219 likes
“Space Cowboys” is the movie that dads watch to pump themselves up for morning treadmill workouts.
Clint Eastwood’s speculative sci fi tale is pure old guy wish fulfillment. It’s creaky, it’s corny. It laughs at its own bad puns and complains about its joint aches.
And you know what? I’m going to let Clint have this one.
While “Cowboys” is Eastwood’s only entry (so far!) in a sfx-driven genre known for big budget bombast, it keeps its ambitions down to… more
Rafael "Mister Movie" Jovine (3.5★) · 171 likes
No one better than Clint Eastwood, the all-time champ of grumpy gramps in film, could be entrusted with the task of bringing the grandparents along for the journey to space.
Another film I've been meaning to watch but didn't know much about until now. And yes, it is far from the best space movie in which a group of men must go to solve a problem that could end the world, like this isn't Armageddon, but everything in space was… more
Remobo (1.5★) · 124 likes
A 20 year-old movie, that constantly jokes about our leads being on their death beds, and 2 of the 4 of them are STILL ALIVE TODAY!
Tons of moments where the "smart young whippersnappers" just have no idea what is even going on. Like a mid-life crisis recorded for posterity, this movie drives a 2016 Corvette and "dates" a 28 year-old stripper.
OK, SONIC BOOMERS!
(this film is over 2 hours long...I started to become afraid that Clint Eastwood was going to outlive ME...)
Filipe Furtado (4★) · 113 likes
The frontier promise and the approaching end. Probably the most mellow easygoing film Eastwood directed, yet it effortless pull more weight than one might at first expect. The space material is very good, there's a practical man on a mission quality to everything in the middle of all those old man's jokes and the cast works really well together right down to many of the smaller parts. And that final shot remains great.