I have a renewed sense of excitement about this movie now that I own the DVD. Its path to favoritism in my collection was long and hard. In fact, back when the movie first came out the trailer did not impress me one bit. Although all four actors were all impressive in their time, the point is that they are the "silver screen" actors of our time. I suppose what bothered me was the idea of putting for older men in parts in which they would play ailing senior citizens. That is not my idea of entertaining. I sounded down right boring. I admit, it was a bit premature, especially considering I had developed this theory all within the span of less than five minutes. I gave them another chance. By the second time I saw the trailer, I rid myself of the Golden Girls mentality. In fact, the more I thought about all those A-list actors in one movie the more I looked forward to seeing it. All you have to do here is close you eyes and remember all those movies they have done. Here we have Tommy Lee Jones who may be up there in years (although the youngest of the bunch at 54), but is not off the list of leading men yet. Next, we have James Garner (the oldest of the bunch) who despite his more recent failures had a successful past. All his sixties and seventies movies are still among my favorites, especially the ones that starred Doris Day. On to Dirty Harry himself, Mr. Clint Eastwood (70 years old), and the Dirty Dozen with Donald Sutherland (65 years old). Now come on here, you cannot possibly get actors more classic than this! It is just a bonus that they happen to star the same movie! To top it all off, these four fine actors bring such genuine emotion to their characters.
The plot of the film is reasonable enough. They were successful in the way they considered the age of the characters. The story revolves around four men, all of which were involved with the invention and testing of the first rocket. The most impressive scene in the film is the beginning scene, where you see them in a black and white. The voice-over here was not top-quality work. What they were trying to do however is commendable. Although the beginning scene features different actors, the voices are the same. They did it in order to give you a sense of who they were as young men in the Air Force (and make them easily identifiable later in the film). Not only does the introduction give you their background, but their character profiles as well. Immediately, you see how they interact with each other as a team. You see their history, and the basis for all their reactions to come. It is in this scene that Bob Gerson (played by James Cromwell) informs them that the government abandoned their experiment and brought NASA in to take over all space operations.
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