Cowboys & Aliens has one of those high-concept titles that tells you exactly what you're going to get. Just like Snakes on a Plane had snakes on a plane, Cowboys & Aliens has cowboys and aliens. It should have been a cool mish-mash of Western and sci-fi genres, but, again, like Snakes on a Plane worked better as a joke on paper. Based loosely on a graphic novel published by Platinum Studios, Cowboys & Aliens had all the makings of a successful summer blockbuster. It had two renowned leading men together for the first time in Daniel Craig and Harrison (James Bond and Indiana Jones!). It had a talented director with a proven track record in Jon Favreau (Iron Man). Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, and Brian Grazer were among the producers. Credited screenwriters included Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman (Transformers), Damon Lindelof (Lost), Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby (also of Iron Man), and Steve Oedekerk (Kung Pow: Enter the Fist), who was attached to write and direct way back in 1997. Hmm…okay that last one was odd, but you can hardly hang the film's failures on a singular man.
Cowboys & Aliens opens with an unidentified man (Craig) awakening in the desert with no memory of who he is or where he came from. There's also a bizarre bracelet attached to his wrist. After killing a trio of assailants, he makes his way to the small town of Absolution where we learn he is a wanted outlaw named Jake Lonergan. The whole town lives in fear of local cattle baron, Col. Woodrow Dolarhyde (Ford), whose sniveling son, Percy (Paul Dano), has also arrived to drunkenly shoot up the place and bully the barkeep Doc (Sam Rockwell). When the Colonel learns Percy and Lonergan have been arrested, he rides into Absolution with the intent of taking them both. Just as the six-shooters are about to be drawn, mysterious lights flash in the sky. The aliens have arrived on crab-like vessels destroying everything below and snatching up innocent people left and right. Among those taken are Percy, Sheriff Taggart (Keith Carradine), and Doc's wife Maria (Ana de la Reguera). Lonergan discovers his bracelet is actually an advanced weapon capable of detecting the aliens and destroying their ships.
Lonergan and Dolarhyde reluctantly form a posse to rescue their people and stave off the alien invasion. Among their group include Doc, Dolarhyde's Native American servant Nat Colorado (Adam Beach, the Sheriff's grandson Emmett (Noah Ringer), the gruff reverend Meacham (Clancy Brown), and a mysterious woman named Ella (Olivia Wilde). Eventually they are all forced to team up with a tribe of Apaches and a band of ruthless outlaws in a final showdown with the extraterrestrials.
The film starts with a strong first act mimicking all the standard tropes of the Western with the taciturn hero and Mexican standoffs. Favreau does his best to ground the story in some semblance of reality even after the outlandish introduction of space invaders. Then, things start going off the rails. The momentum built up at the beginning drops into a second act lull as the plot takes its time to develop its thinly drawn characters. The narrative is clumsily dotted with flashback sequences of Lonergan's fuzzy past. Ford is initially cast against type as a gruff and slightly racist antagonist, but he's Harrison Ford and can't stay that way the whole movie. He's significantly softened with two cheesy subplots of Dolarhyde acting as a surrogate father to Nat and Emmett. The movie also gets taken down a notch with the early loss of Paul Dano, who served as an excellent whipping boy to Craig's Lonergan. Despite her insane gorgeousness, Olivia Wilde appears only as a functionary character to deliver helpful exposition and act as a deus ex machine to defeat the aliens. Also wasted are great character actors like Keith Carradine, Walt Goggins, and Clancy Brown.
Favreau is a solid director with a knack for handling large ensembles, but he's not the flashiest when it comes to action. His finales (both Iron Man movies, for example) tend to build up strong and then fizzle out towards the end. Cowboys & Aliens suffers from an anti-climatic finish as the final battle between the humans and aliens becomes monotonous and easily forgettable.
While classic Westerns like The Searchers served as inspiration, Cowboys & Aliens (with its wooden dialogue and silly plot contrivances) recalls the B-movie productions of Roger Corman. There is an underlying irony beneath the pedestrian narrative about our nation's history of genocide and Manifest Destiny, but don't think for an instance this movie is an allegory for American imperialism. Cowboys & Aliens isn't a game changing genre bender. It is summer entertainment. Mindless escapism in its purest form.
Rating: ** (*****)
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