Cowboys and Aliens

A Night At the Theater

By Louis Lalire

One Snake-Hater, One Martini-Lover, Two Studs

Jon Favreau’s Cowboys & Aliens is not nearly as preposterous as its name implies, but rather a gritty adventure with a premise that answers the question: what would happen if Aliens attacked not in present-day, but in Arizona Territory, 1873? The film works because it keeps its poker face straight throughout, never meandering towards camp. The result is a flawed, special effects-laden and thoroughly entertaining summer blockbuster.

The Cowboys are led by Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig), an amnesiac with a troubled past, who wakes up in the desert with a mysterious metal bracelet stuck on his hand. He was the leader of a large gang and has a bounty on his head, but people soon forget about such things when Alien ships attack the town and ‘lasso’ in all the women, children, etc., and Lonergan shoots down one of the flying saucer-types with his powerful bracelet gun. The determined, ruthless cattleman Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) heads up a posse to get all their captured loved ones back, including his not-so-loveable son Leroy (Paul Dano), and he realizes Lonergan’s newfound importance: “You. You’re going with us, I need that weapon—it’s the only thing that counts.”

This plot does draw comparisons to John Ford’s The Searchers, but with the green-blooded extra terrestrials replacing Chief Scar’s merciless Comanche. Unfortunately, that’s really all it seems this movie does with the Aliens. Instead of a successful genre mash-up, we get an old-fashioned western with the Aliens filling the roles of the Indians in a traditional Hollywood sense: there only purpose is to disrupt the cowboys’ way of life and to give ‘em something to shoot at. We know almost nothing about what these Aliens are motivated by (they want gold, for some reason, and perform horrible experiments on humans, for some reason), nor do these unimaginative creepy crawlers have a single line of dialogue. It boggles my mind how these Aliens appear to be so stupid, yet have incredibly advanced technology. But the movie simply doesn’t have enough time to explain such things, and while the Western aspects thrive, the Sci-Fi elements, like the aliens themselves, get buried in the desert. You come away feeling everyone involved in Cowboys just wanted to make a conventional western; it’s a sad thing being told that’s not financially viable.

The real strength of Cowboys is in it’s acting, led by the Brit Daniel Craig, who comfortably steps into the most old fashioned character role of them all: the quiet, gun-slinging, morally ambiguous lead. His American accent is on-point and his sharp blue eyes and physical presence will no doubt lead to even move comparisons to the great Steve McQueen, who famously played the quiet, gun-slinger role in The Magnificent Seven. Harrison Ford is equally convincing as Dolarhyde, the cattle baron with whom we grow to like over the course of the film. Few actors possess a better “I’m Fucking Serious Now Face” then Harrison Ford.

An "I'm Serious Now" Harrison Face in Action

Dolarhyde’s posse is both well-cast and consistently well-played, comprised of a saloon owner humorously named ‘Doc’ (the dependable Sam Rockwell), an otherworldly beauty named Ella (Olivia Wilde), a helpful preacher (Clancy Brown), a Native American named Nat Colorado (Adam Beach), and finally, a boy (Noah Ringer)—why you would take a small boy with you, I don’t know. All of these characters are played well and they each seem to get their own story time, the most engaging of which is the father/son relationship between Dolarhyde and his secondhand man Nat. The only reason I can theorize as to why Cowboys & Aliens has six accredited writers—yes, six—is that each character’s story was written by a different person. The story does get quite choppy at points.

But the posse’s quest never dulls, whether they’re stumbling upon a riverboat in the middle of the desert or running into Apache Indians (helpful ones this time), I was thoroughly entertained. The effects are mostly cool and rarely detracting, and the action scenes are well choreographed. One scene that stands out is when Craig leaps from his horse onto a small, flying alien scout ship to save Wilde. Once they destroy the craft and fall into a river, he amusingly proclaims in shock, “We were just flying! I don’t ever wanna do that again.” 

I only wished Cowboys & Aliens had a few more moments like this—let it have a little more fun with itself. After smelted gold covers and exterminates an alien, and the camera pauses the action and focuses on our heroes, Craig and Ford, the least I expect is a one-liner. It never comes. But perhaps that is ultimately avoided for the best, so Favreau can make the movie he wants to: a substantial summer blockbuster that pays homage to traditional Westerns, instead of that silly movie that’s remembered for teaming up James Bond and Indiana Jones in the Old West. He [mostly] succeeds.


3/5


P.S. We all remember the last time Indy and James paired up. James was less suave and more bald, but no less effective...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nh-cVHdhTp4