Cowboys & Aliens

Westerns:  An absolute staple of cinema.  What does a Western involve?  Cowboys, Indians, horse chases, mostly within the environment of the Old West.  These are movies that starred some of the most prolific actors of their generation, namely: John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Gary Cooper, Roy Rogers.  When you hear the word Western, those names are probably the ones that jump to mind.  Westerns have been a staple of cinema since cinema became a thing, decades ago.  Science Fiction is also a staple of cinema, also going back decades.  However, the genre really became popular during the 50s and 60s with movies like The Day The Earth Stood Still, Them!,  Tarantula, and The Fly(original).  Both genres have flourished and produced some of the most amazing movies like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, High Plains Drifter, The Magnificent Seven, Star Wars, Alien, and The Terminator.  So what happens when you combine the two?

Cowboys & Aliens opens in the middle of a desert, when a strange man with no memory(Daniel Craig) wakes up with a strange device around his wrist and a strange wound on his torso.  After dispatching a group of bounty hunters, he makes his way to the sleepy mining town of Absolution.  He befriends the local preacher Meacham(Clancy Brown) who stitches him up.  The two are interrupted by Percy(Paul Dano) the trouble-making son of the local cattle baron, Woodrow Dolarhyde(Harrison Ford).  After seemingly putting Percy in his place, the two are arrested by Sheriff Taggart.  Before they are hauled away, the town comes under attack by mysterious objects, that end up abducting a number of people, including Percy, the wife of a local bartender and town doctor(Sam Rockwell).  The mysterious man with the strange metal bracelet, Jake Lonergan, discovers that the bracelet is actually a weapon, which he uses to shoot down one of the objects.  The creature piloting the strange vessel eventually escapes.  With the help of a mysterious woman, Elle(Olivia Wilde), and Dolarhyde, they ride off in search of the missing townspeople and the beings that took them.

The performances in this movie are pretty solid across the board, with Daniel Craig in the lead.  His introduction is awesome.  His character is tough, rugged and very much determined to recover his memory.  Daniel Craig is fantastic as he does most of his own stunts.  Paul Dano's character is a bit of a wimpy dirtbag, but Dano pulls that off perfectly.  The one real stand-out in this film is Harrison Ford.  He does a real good job playing a grizzled old cowboy.  Why Ford hadn't starred in more Westerns is beyond me, he's perfect for it.  He did play a cowboy in Star Wars, after all, Han Solo.  He was born to be in Westerns.  He basically steals the show whenever he's on the screen.  So, how's the rest of the movie?

This one is a mixed bag.  It seems like Cowboys & Aliens doesn't seem to know what kind of movie it wants to be.  Does it want to be a Western, or a sci-fi movie?   The problem is that when you hear a title like Cowboys & Aliens, you would at least expect the movie to be as outlandish as its title suggests.  Therein lies the problem.  It's not outlandish enough.  The concept is fantastic.  It should have worked.  One of the problems, is that it takes too long to get to the next action set-piece, and as a result, it feels longer than it is.  Even more so when you watch the extended edition on Blu-Ray.  The action that we do see is fantastic with incredible visual effects and awesome creature design.  The story is unique and Jake's backstory gets filled in along the way and we realize why he's such a good fighter.  Harrison Ford doesn't go over the top with his character, making him more realistic.  The other element that the movie surprises you with is the inclusion of Apache Indians, which adds a new angle to the movie.

This isn't a bad movie, far from it.  What it gets right, it does very well.  The visual effects are top-notch and the action is thrilling.  The opening twenty minutes feel like a real Western.  Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford feel like they belong in the genre.  This is more of a Western movie than a sci-fi movie, when it should've been equal parts.  When the aliens attack the town for the first time, you feel like, "Oh, yeah, it's going down!"  But after that, it slows down to deliver exposition.  I'm not opposed to that, but as I said before, it just takes too long to get to the action.  This is a surprisingly violent movie, especially the extended edition which is available only on blu-ray.  The extended edition is a lot bloodier, especially in the final battle of the film, but it also fleshes out some of the characters a bit more.  It's seventeen minutes longer than the theatrical version, which unfortunately means it takes longer to get to the action.  When I first saw the film, I thought it was awesome.  But it doesn't exactly hold up after repeated viewings.  It falls apart, at least the narrative does.  Olivie Wilde really doesn't do much than stand there and look pretty, not that I'm complaining.  Overall, this movie is a mixed bag.  If you're going in expecting a Western, it's not too shabby.  If you go in expecting a sci-fi movie, I don't think you'll be overly disappointed either.  If you go in expecting BOTH, it doesn't quite work.  It's also not nearly as outlandish as I was hoping it to be.  Overall, this is a 7.5/10 effort.  It could've been SO much more.