Clint Eastwood is Frank Corvin, not to be confused with the Frank Horrigan he played in In the Line of Fire or the Frank Morris he played in Escape from Alcatraz. Frank is a pilot on Team Daedalus, Air Force hot shots being groomed to be the first astronauts. The year is 1958, the world is still black and white (before those damn aliens from They Live colorized it), and Frank's character looks much much younger, but still talks with Clint's gruff 70-year-old voice. Weird.

Tommy Lee Jones is Hank Hawkins, a bit too much of a hot dog. Never mind that Tommy Lee would have been 12 in the first scenes that take place in 1958--his Hawk is presumably older, and with a reckless disregard for safety that ruins Daedalus's chances of being astronauts. NASA is created, a monkey flies, and none of the team ever makes it into space, until . . .

Donald Sutherland is Jerry O'Nell, ladies man extraordinaire. Even as a geriatric, he's dating chicks half his age . . . good for him! Still, something is missing, and when Frank Corvin comes around to ask him if he wants to finally be an astronaut, he says hell yes.

James Garner is Tank Sullivan. Poor Tank looks old. The movie would have us believe that he is able to run for 2 miles, and pass the physical to get on the space shuttle. Don't you believe it. I love the man, but he's got one foot in the grave.

So why are these dudes flying? Seems the Russians have a dead satellite that's outfitted with Frank Corvin's obsolete guidance system. No modern engineer knows how it works, so Frank is going to go up (with his old team, of course), and fix the damn thing.

Meanwhile, he has to deal with arrogant infant astronauts who think he's unqualified, and a backstabbing project director who knows that the satellite in question packs a nasty little surprise for the boys.

Parts of Space Cowboys are entertaining. Eastwood is great, as is Donald Sutherland. Those old boys still have a lot of life left in them. Watching them show up the young punk astronauts is fun, but frankly could have been funner.

The pic turns from laid-back comedy into high-flying adventure in the last half hour, and that stuff left me a little cold. Half the time I couldn't figure out what was going on, or why people were doing what . . . It reminded me of Mission to Mars in that respect. Attention all high-tech action writers: I'm not a rocket scientist--please overload your dialogue with exposition so I understand what exactly doesn't have fuel, why that's a bad thing, and what the possible consequences are if someone doesn't go on a suicide mission to fix it.

Anyway, the buzz on Space Cowboys was that it's pretty good. I found it to be kinda good, and kinda lousy. Watching Clint is cool as always, but it could have been better, and frankly, you won't buy any of it.