Cowboys & Aliens **

Bond teams up with Indie for the first in its kind: a sci-fi western – and it’s a great concept, full of untapped imagination. The 1999 action comedy adventure Wild, Wild West brought inventions into the western sphere, but this goes that step further. Add some aliens to kick the proverbial butt out of, and you’ve got a recipe for big-screen (thankfully, non-3D) success. Perhaps, as Cowboys & Aliens is like comic actor-turned-director Jon Favreau’s ‘crazy wet dream’ in movieland terms, dreamt up on a wild lads’ night out on the tiles. However, it is in fact based on a 2006 Platinum Studios graphic novel created by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg.

When a spaceship arrives in Arizona in 1873 to take over the Earth, outlaw Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) and local businessman Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) don’t take too kindly to the aliens making off with their townsfolk. They decide to show the unwanted extraterrestrial visitors a thing or two about manners and how they resolve issues the Wild West way.

The film opens with great promise and intrigue, with Craig as Jake waking up in the desert in a dazed state, sporting a futuristic metal ‘bangle’. But it’s soon apparent that Craig who does his best John Wayne impression throughout has decided to take himself way too seriously for such a fantastical storyline. Whether this is intentional is hard to tell, like a parody of western heroes like Wayne, but the writers try (and fail) to make things lighter, giving him the odd throwaway comment to inject some humour into his performance. Sadly, with all the best deadpan intentions in the world, Craig and comedy just don’t mix.

However, the biggest disappointment is a monetary ‘growling exchange of words’ between Jake and Woodrow over said bangle’s origins – even if both naturally grow to respect each other – rather than the anticipated standoff that would have delighted fans of both actors far more. Their initial dislike is woefully short-lived and could have been played up more to heighten any bickering chemistry they have.

Harrison has gone from grouchy male lead to older, grouchier male lead in this, and as was evident in his last Indie film, takes the action sequences easy, as not to put a body part out of place. There is a nice nod to the hit adventure franchise at the end that involves both Jake’s and Woodrow’s hats, but the latter actor spends most of the time glaring and muttering to match Craig’s intense, icy-blue staring and monosyllabic retort. Meaningful dialogue is few and far between.

The plot has so many holes and unexplained phenomena that it’s hard to know where to begin. Most obvious is the lack of information as to why the aliens are mining the region’s gold in the first place, and why they have the captive humans in a trace to do it? Surely they could just set up spacecraft camp in the desert – as they do, and carry on without needing to upset the locals? And just when you think things will be made a little clearer by real-life, alien-looking actress Olivia Wilde as the mysterious, otherworldly Ella, you’re still left with exactly the same questions of why is this happening at all, and who the hell is Ella, and what’s her purpose for being there – if only to keep constantly reminding Jake to search in himself for answers. Trouble is, we don’t get to hear them.

Even the alien species is a letdown, merely replicas of other iconic alien films, and rather two-dimensional. Apart from missing people, there is little empathy built up for either man or extraterrestrial beast when the end battle commences because we’re missing an important backstory, or any real sense of purpose for the visitors’ presence on earth, so the whole thing leaves you feeling rather indifferent. And as Michael Bay has learnt with his Transformers, there needs to be more to the impressive metallic gadgetry of these beings to hold the interest. There may be an explosive, rubble- and arrow-filled ending – the likes of which feels slightly nauseating as cowboys and Indians bond in harmony to pander to American patriotism and pride, but the action fizzles and sparks and leaves the earth’s atmosphere in the same mysterious way as the aliens arrive.

Either excitable Favreau was too impatient to get to his dreamlike finale, or a lot of the film ended up on the cutting room floor, but there is not enough clarification for a lot of what happens in Cowboys & Aliens, even to simply enjoy the (frustrating) ride, just whimsical imagery of what could have happen, had aliens landed in the 19th Century.

2/5 stars

By @FilmGazer

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