Clint Eastwood is a very interesting man - a jazz and blues bar pianist in Oakland, California during high school, Clint went on to become one of the biggest box office draws in history AND a solid film director with a best picture Oscar to his credit. He has been successful as an actor in genres ranging from westerns to action to broad comedy and thrillers - he has even managed a turn or two as a romantic lead. In looking over his directing career it becomes clear Eastwood makes one film which will do very well ("Play Misty For Me", "The Outlaw - Josey Wales", "The Gauntlet"), followed by a riskier and much more personal project (like "Breezy", "Honkytonk Man", "White Hunter, Black Heart" and "Bird"). And then there is "Unforgiven", from a screenplay written in the 1970s by David Webb Peoples, which Eastwood bought and waited a number of years to film - until he'd reached an age which would allow him to dump his Man With No Name image upside down, a work of American art examining myth-making and alcohol-fueled violence in our culture; "Unforgiven" seemed to fit both categories, an assured project with a risk. Clint made sure "Unforgiven" was done as the screenplay written, and, as he appreciated so much the archaic structure and cadence of the dialogue, he had the writer present during the shoot for any required script changes.

For all that his image projects, the man apart from the persona is much less the laconic loner - by all accounts he is easy and good to work with; for instance, his production company, Malpaso, has been on the Warner lot for a LONG time, and cinematographer/director Jack N. Green (who shot "Unforgiven" and won his first Oscar) started as a B Camera Operator on "The Gauntlet" 25 years ago. People have been on his payroll for many years, rising in the ranks - a testament to his qualities as an employer, and the satisfaction his workers feel with the product they put out. "Geezers In Space". Concise, and exact. Guaranteed box office or risk? - for profit or for love? I say profit - no harm, no foul, and quite entertaining even if you're not yet a geezer yourself. Though Clint isn't making films for the 14 - 25 year old market, he IS making films for Baby Boomers, and the tension generated here will appeal to almost anyone past the MTV-style of story-telling. Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones ("JFK", "Men In Black"), James Garner ("Maverick", "Victor/Victoria") and Donald Sutherland ("M.A.S.H.", "Eye Of The Needle", "Panic") were once Team Daedalus, the first astronauts bumped from manned flight by chimpanzees at the start of the space program in 1958s. Years later they reunite as a team to save the planet from a Russian remnant of the cold war left in space, a communications satellite with a few alterations, the justification being they are the oldest surviving men with the flight training AND the knowledge of that era's technology. It's a simple conceit, and it works well under Eastwood's assured direction. It has a feeling I associate with a geriatric "Thunderbolt And Lightfoot", buddies pulling off a big and dangerous caper. It's fun, a tad technical, but there is the tone of elegy here too, as there has been with quite a few of Eastwood's directorial films. The top four do fine work with what they're given. The rest of the cast are given stock parts, and are not called upon to do much beyond 'selling the situations'. Marcia Gay Harden ("Miller's Crossing", "Flubber", "Pollack") is also good, though her part is underwritten and most of her talent squandered as a result. James Cromwell ("L.A. Confidential", "Babe") is appropriately menacing if not truly evil yet again - far removed from his "All In The Family" Stretch Cunnigham or "Babe"'s Farmer Hoggett. William Devane ("McCabe And Mrs. Miller", "Rolling Thunder" "Payback", and the tv series "Knot's Landing") chews the scenery (in a good way) as Mission Control, and creates an enormously annoying yet endearing character out of little. Rade Serbedzja ("Eyes Wide Shut", "Snatch") is becoming the Akim Tamiroff of current films, the Eastern European with a rubber face and a guttural accent - here he plays a Russian general straight, as if he were just another Russian functionary. Courtney B. Vance ("The Hunt For Red October"), Loren Dean ("Enemy Of The State", "Gattaca") and Blair Brown ("Altered States") do well with the little given them - they lend enough credibility to the actions of the principals with no grandstanding. Eastwood uses, for the most part, traditional special effects, supplemented by digital visual effects, to achieve the space scenes, and they are quite exciting - no "Vomit Comet" weightless filming here (as employed in "Apollo 13"). In the opening sequences, set in '58, with four young actors, Eastwood dubs himself, Jones, Sutherland and Cromwell over them, and it is a bit disconcerting - though the sequences are brief enough, and the idea interesting (much the same as he did with the original Charlie Parker recordings, taking Parker's work and surrounding it with new digital recordings of the other instruments in "Bird" - it doesn't quite work, but it is at the very least intriguing and 'reverential'). Actually, Eastwood's directing is always quite conventional; he knows he's a story teller, and he leisurely spins his yarns without flash. They are solid works, almost comforting in their straightforward style. A friend of mine turned down $250,000 for 2 weeks work as the villain in "Pale Rider" (eventually played by Richard Dysart) - after reading the script three times he had too many notes to feel the script good enough (he was a writer himself); however, given tip-top material Eastwood has proven to make the best of it. The writing here, by Ken Kaufman and Howard Klausner,) is not tip-top, but serviceable for the show; I wish there had been a few more rewrites to smooth out the clich

Picture: An excellent anamorphic 2.35:1 transfer graces the disc - no flaws are evident. Skin tones are rendered naturally, colors and sharpness outstanding, and black levels are deep. Sharpening, edge-enhancement pixelization are non-existent. Warner has consistently provided very good to excellent transfers for laserdiscs and DVDs, and this is yet another example of their fine work. Sound: A Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is provided, and is quite good, using everything in your system as the circumstances require. By no means an outstanding mix, it is in keeping with the more traditional elements of the film-making, complementing it very nicely without drawing attention to itself. Lennie Niehaus' score is lovely and effective, the main theme based on a piece Eastwood composed.

Well, the good thing about the extras here is that they are entertaining and informative - the bad is that they are not plentiful. There are 4 featurettes made for the disc: "Up Close With The Editor", 7 minutes with Joel Cox expounding on editing a film filled with effects shots; another 7 minutes with Michael Owens, visual effects supervisor, in (appropriately enough) "The Effects"; a good, informative 28-minute featurette "Back At The Ranch", which not only interviews the actors, but also the writers, the director of photography, the production designer, and the NASA technical advisors; and the whole sequence of the 'Ripe Stuff' on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" seen only briefly in the film. A theatrical trailer and decent filmographies (wonder why Courtney B. Vance is listed but there is no information for him?) finish the package.

This is a solid presentation of a fun movie peopled by four icons of latter-day 20th century pop culture, with a few very well-done supplements which add to the pleasure of seeing these guys work their chops. The film took longer to come to disc than all of last year's films, and at a $2 higher price point than any other Warner title (so what's with THAT, huh?), but it is solid entertainment, and well worth the time you spend with it. It would also be VERY nice to see Warner revisit "Unforgiven" with a new transfer and a host of supplemental features - it deserves it, you folks at Warner, and time's a wastin'!