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.