Cowboys & Aliens is Fun and Forgettable
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The concept in Cowboys & Aliens is great, the Wild West vs. technologically superior aliens, and who needs substance anyway?
Written by The Horror Czar, Don Sumner
August 11, 2011
Movie Trailer
Image Gallery
Release: July 29, 2011
Directed by: Jon Favreau
Written by: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof , Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Steve Oedekerk and Scott Mitchell Rosenberg (Comic)
Starring:
Daniel Craig as Jake Lonergan
Harrison Ford as Woodrow Dolarhyde
Abigail Spencer as Alice
Buck Taylor as Wes Claiborne
Olivia Wilde as Ella Swenson
Paul Dano as Percy Dolarhyde
Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) awakens in the middle of the desert with no clothes on, a strange bracelet locked around his wrist and no memory of who or where he is. He’s a damn good killer, though, as he proves when a band of would-be robbers meet their doom at his hands.
Jake makes his way to a town that is under the thumb of the cattle baron Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) and terrorized by his spoiled and ridiculously wimpy son Percy (Paul Dano), and proceeds to get himself into a heap of trouble. Luckily for him a formation of alien ships arrives and lassos many of the townsfolk and whisks them away. Jake must now make nice with a cast of characters to defeat the aliens to save the world.
Cowboys & Aliens is an interesting film with some fantastic scenery, a wild concept and some absolutely A-list stars. The Wild West setting, filmed in California and New Mexico, is perfect. The town set is also great - completely authentic and convincing looking. Some of the scenes out on the range or on the rocks are actually inspiring, even those enhanced by CGI-created alien bunkers.
You’ve got to love the Cowboys & Aliens concept – alien invaders with gold fever setting up shop in the wild west and periodically venturing outside of their spaceship fortress to attack towns and snatch inhabitants away with giant lassos so they can perform heinous experiments on them before preparing them for dinner. The biggest question surrounding this, of course, is how events such as these could have transpired in the history of the California gold rush with nary a mention of it in any official (or even unofficial) history book. I guess the rewriting of history we hear about from activist granola types actually happens, at least in this case.
The cast – what can be said about Indiana Jones and James Bond in
the same movie? There is no doubt that all the stops were pulled when
it came to this big-studio star vehicle. I even understand that the
grandson of the legendary John Wayne has a bit part in this one.
Everything is in line with Cowboys &
Aliens for a big studio hit. With all this going for it its almost
easy to overlook the complete goofiness. Almost… The big box office
draws in Cowboys & Aliens are just too much. Daniel Craig
as a two-bit prairie thug? James Bond? And what about Harrison Ford as
the cattle baron of a small poor town in the middle of nowhere… really?
Without acknowledging that Ford’s character is presented as a ruthless
and brutal Capitalist Pig of the worst sort in spite of the fact that
he’s actually just a big mushy softy, it’s tough to swallow. The
casting, for all the box office power, makes absolutely no sense in the
context of this film and the characters. Actually crosses the line to
ridiculous.
The biggest downer about Cowboys & Aliens is that when it’s all said and done, the film is pretty forgettable. There are some good alien flight scenes and some nice fights where cowboys and Indians battle CGI alien monsters, but the details are fuzzy. Good triumphs over evil, but that’s not very satisfying. Family riffs are healed, and a huge “ho hum” is the only reaction.
The star power and effects budget of Cowboys & Aliens all but guarantees a strong box office showing, but ultimately that will be the end of it until the highly publicized DVD release yet to come. Nobody will talk about this film, and it will not wind up on any “best of” lists. Just add the pieces, apply marketing dollars, take the ticket money and move on to the next feature. Nothing else to see here folks… move along.
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