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The terse joke of hijacked machinery in enemy territory is from Keaton, out of which emerges a reconsideration of The Eiger Sanction. The distressed warrior dragged back into the game, the Air Force vet (Clint Eastwood) with memories of Vietnamese children and napalm, just the shaken hero for the times. American is lagging on Cold War gadgetry, behind the Iron Curtain is top-secret aircraft "by all intents and purposes invisible." Entering Moscow is a grim affair, a Möbius strip of lingering trauma and revolving identities aided by agents ready to die. The dissident (Warren Clarke) hopes to do his activist wife justice, the Jewish scientists (Nigel Hawthorne, Dimitra Arliss, Ronald Lacey) face the fire at the military base, the protagonist's triumphs are reflected in their doomed eyes. ("Don't you ever get tired of fighting city hall?" snaps the Yank, and those used to authoritarianism can only smile wryly at this sheltered "free man.") Nationalist pawns on both sides (cf. Hitchcock's Topaz), the English intelligence man (Freddie Jones) and the Soviet First Secretary (Stefan Schnabel) are part of a doubling pattern further developed in Sudden Impact. After the pervasive darkness of the infiltration, the bright skies and vertiginous whooshes of the escape—computerized screens and zipping models figure in some of Eastwood's most abstract filmmaking. The missile launched by thought, the pained scowl behind the helmet visor. "You like our new toy?" "It could be improved." In the most haunted of Reaganite fantasies, the cockpit might be a high-tech coffin and the climactic dogfight with the Russkie doppelgänger turns out to be a liquidation of the self. Space Cowboys continues the thematic exploration as a serene elegy. With David Huffman, Kenneth Colley, Klaus Löwitsch, and Kai Wulff.
--- Fernando F. Croce |