First of all, suspend your disbelief and get ready for massive implausibility.
But plausibility aside, it's great to see these four veteran actors working together. The real payoff is the first half of the film, in which the old comrades train and prepare for a space shuttle mission. They grind their way through physical exercises and medical checkups, to the amusement of the younger astronauts. Sutherland needs glasses, which would disqualify him, but he cleverly cheats in his eye exam.
The team needs to fix a malfunctioning Soviet satellite which is getting close to crashing into the earth. Normally, a falling satellite burns up when it enters earth's atmosphere, or it lands in the ocean. But that is not an option, and we don't find out why until the last act. It's a geopolitical issue, rather hard to swallow, but then, the whole plot is pretty hard to swallow.
The second half of the film, when our heroes are in space on the shuttle, becomes a bit tedious. We've all seen enough space disaster movies to be jaded as we watch the usual computer generated graphics. Still, the tension is there. We hope our boys survive and make it home safe. No big spoiler: only three make it back.
Donald Sutherland and James Garner both turn in fine performances, but they are essentially sidekicks to the main men, Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones. Jones was 53 at the time of filming, the youngest of the four, so he doesn't exactly qualify as a geezer. Eastwood was 70, Garner was 72, and Sutherland was 64. But Jones gets most of the funny lines, and he does "wacky" very well. He has a brief affair with a NASA official (Marcia Gay Harden), which is completely irrelevant to the story, but it gives us a chance to see her weeping and wincing as she watches him risking his life on the monitors at the space center.
All four actors are clearly having fun in their roles, knowing how silly the whole thing is. And it's silly, indeed. But it's also entertaining, kind of like a really good cartoon. 3 1/2 stars for the four protagonists' performances.
But plausibility aside, it's great to see these four veteran actors working together. The real payoff is the first half of the film, in which the old comrades train and prepare for a space shuttle mission. They grind their way through physical exercises and medical checkups, to the amusement of the younger astronauts. Sutherland needs glasses, which would disqualify him, but he cleverly cheats in his eye exam.
The team needs to fix a malfunctioning Soviet satellite which is getting close to crashing into the earth. Normally, a falling satellite burns up when it enters earth's atmosphere, or it lands in the ocean. But that is not an option, and we don't find out why until the last act. It's a geopolitical issue, rather hard to swallow, but then, the whole plot is pretty hard to swallow.
The second half of the film, when our heroes are in space on the shuttle, becomes a bit tedious. We've all seen enough space disaster movies to be jaded as we watch the usual computer generated graphics. Still, the tension is there. We hope our boys survive and make it home safe. No big spoiler: only three make it back.
Donald Sutherland and James Garner both turn in fine performances, but they are essentially sidekicks to the main men, Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones. Jones was 53 at the time of filming, the youngest of the four, so he doesn't exactly qualify as a geezer. Eastwood was 70, Garner was 72, and Sutherland was 64. But Jones gets most of the funny lines, and he does "wacky" very well. He has a brief affair with a NASA official (Marcia Gay Harden), which is completely irrelevant to the story, but it gives us a chance to see her weeping and wincing as she watches him risking his life on the monitors at the space center.
All four actors are clearly having fun in their roles, knowing how silly the whole thing is. And it's silly, indeed. But it's also entertaining, kind of like a really good cartoon. 3 1/2 stars for the four protagonists' performances.