Photobucket
           



Cowboys & Aliens


Director: Jon Favreau (2011)
Starring: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell
Find it: IMDB

James Bond and Indiana Jones team up to fight aliens in the Wild West, directed by the bloke who made Iron Man. And yet Cowboys & Aliens struggles to be as fun as that sentence would have you imagine. Still, it's more successful than the unreadable comic book upon which it is based. Cowboys & Aliens is one of the few comic books I couldn't bring myself to finish reading. And I managed to read The Dark Knight Strikes Again.

What I did read doesn't much resemble the film I saw. Tough guy Jake Lonergan wakes up in the desert, barefoot and with no memory of who he is or how he came to be there. Attached to his wrist is a device that looks (and works, as it happens) like what the Predator wears in Predator. He finds his way to a nearby town where he is promptly arrested by Sheriff Keith Carradine and harassed by grumpy Colonel Dolarhyde (Ford). Then aliens arrive and kidnap Keith Carradine and a handful of other settlers. Lonergan, Dolarhyde and the remaining villagers band together to rescue their missing relatives and send the dastardly alien invaders packing.

Rather than feeling like a proper film about cowboys fighting aliens, Cowboys & Aliens feels like product. It's like Transformers. It's easier to watch than Transformers, but there's that similar sense of cliche and perfunctory action. Perhaps if Olivia Wilde did something. Literally, she just stands around with a dumb expression on her face. Even when she's grabbed by an alien spaceship, she's very blasé about it. Perhaps if Daniel Craig could make up his mind whether he's doing an English accent or an American one. Perhaps if Harrison Ford pretended to give a shit. But at least it has Walton Goggins from off've Justified, Sam Rockwell and Clancy Brown in it. Between the cast, Cowboys & Aliens manages to muster up some of the fun it could have been.

Cowboys & Aliens is review proof. No matter what anyone says about it, it'll always have that title. There'll always be that doubt in the back of your mind: "it's a film called Cowboys & Aliens. It can't not be good." And it is good. Occasionally. But not like it should have been.

4 comments:

  1. A 'perfect' film title that delivers what it promises: there are many cowboys and yes, there's also loads of aliens. That's it. No more, no less. *sigh*

    ReplyDelete
  2. Joel, I missed reading your writing for the few days that you didn't post. Happy to see you are back. Hope all is well in your world.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I simply wanted to make a small comment to be able to appreciate you for all of the lovely advice you are giving at this site. My time-consuming internet investigation has finally been paid with excellent know-how to share with my colleagues. I 'd state that that many of us website visitors are very lucky to dwell in a fine network with so many outstanding individuals with very helpful tricks. I feel very blessed to have encountered your site and look forward to some more entertaining times reading here. Thank you again for a lot of things.
    Thorlo Unisex Thick Cushion Running Rolltop Sock

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think other web-site proprietors should take this website as an model, very clean and wonderful user genial style and design, let alone the content. You are an expert in this topic!
    La Canadienne Women's Felicia Boot

    ReplyDelete