Cowboys & Aliens Movie Review
Cowboys & Aliens Movie Review
Directed by Jon Favreau, starring Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, and Olivia Wilde.
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Although no one actually says "This town ain't big enough for the both of us," or "Take me to your leader" Cowboys & Aliens does indeed incorporate many of its mash-up movie roots and it does so quite well under the capable hand of director and diehard cinephile, Jon Favreau.
Normally, I am not a huge fan of the Fav. Elf is really the only flick of his I halfway enjoyed. But I more than halfway enjoyed Cowboys & Aliens. It's one of the few cross-genre extravaganzas I've seen lately which services both of its conceptual elements (however, tonally I feel it needed a little more zing - comedy or drama, pick one and pack that punch) making for one of the better sci-fi westerns I've ever seen. (It's a damn sight better than, say, The Burrowers — which also, incidentally, featured actor Clancy Brown).
Aside from the cohesive collision of science fiction and horse opera, the two leads, icons Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig, compliment each other well in spite of their surface similarities (no smiles, strong, silent). Craig plays Jake Lonergan, a rough-hewn cowboy type who finds himself thrown into the old west with some new fangled technology locked to his wrist and no memory of how he got there. Within seconds, he's surrounded by a posse (not the good kind) and finds out he's wanted dead or alive (preferably dead). Not one to go down without a fight, Jake takes out several opponents with violent aplomb, rustles a horse, and rides off into the sunset (or is that the golden beams from a UFO?). His adventure is just beginning.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) strategizes the outlaw's recapture while trying to deal with the sky-sent invasion of "demons" (the word alien didn't exist on the prairie) that's plucking Absolution's residents from sawdust floors to a spaceship's maw and spiriting them away to scary places unknown. On top of this, there's a woman — a salty, spirited and of course drop-dead gorgeous saloon girl who can get the drop on any dude by using one of any weapons in her considerable arsenal. She's got a secret, and naturally Lonergan gets close enough to find out what it is… and he doesn't like it.
The movie is flawlessly cast. Of course moviegoers are gonna love Craig and Ford (sounds like a comedy team, *so* isn't!) but the peripheral characters played by the likes of the aforementioned Clancy, Keith Carradine, Sam Rockwell, Adam Beach hold their own. I liked Olivia Wilde as the love interest — pretty as she is, she's believable as a tough Wild West woman.
Matthew Libatique's cinematography is pretty, but not epic — I feel his talents were somewhat wasted (he's Darren Aronofsky's favorite shooter and he was nominated for an Academy Award last year for Black Swan, but then again he's a master at crating visuals which mesh nicely with CGI and for that, his job is well done here. Other accoutrement, such as music, costumes, etc., also blend in nicely without standing out.
So, not only are there cowboys and aliens, there's romance, adventure, science fiction, action galore, and yes, even horror. The evil E.T.s, plus the CGI in all its gory glory, are refreshingly well-wrought (especially considering Spielberg's name is one this, and I was less than impressed with the pixilated monsters in Super 8).
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson