Mini Review - Cowboys & Aliens

We have an interesting pairing here. James Bond meets Han Solo. This is Cowboys & Aliens

With the star power or Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig you’d figure this movie would be a success, but nope, made on a $160m budget, this movie bad a mere $173m, which by the time you address theatre cuts and promotional expenditure makes this movie ‘one of 2011’s most expensive flops’

But not all movies that are financial failures are necessarily bad movies, but this one seems to have committed a worse crime, being OK, a rating of 43% on rotten tomatoes with an equivalent audience score and average ratings of 5.5/10 and 3.1/5 respectively.

The movie was directed by Jon Favreau, who had just come off of Iron Man 2, intriguingly another movie that has the same audience approval rating as critic approval rating on rotten tomatoes. Robert Downey Jr was originally intended to play the lead but dropped out owing to the filming of Sherlock 2. Probably for the best

What do I think of the movie, well let’s take a look?

Outlaw Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wakes up in the desert with a weapon mysteriously attached to his arm, he returns to find himself caught up in vendettas related to his former life and the tiny insignificant matter of a massive alien invasion targeting just this area of desert and no-where else.

He must team up with former enemy Colonel Woodrue Dollarhyde, Doc (Sam Rockwell) a distressed bar-owner whose wife was abducted, a child (of course) named Emmett Taggart (played by *gasp* Noah Ringer) Dollarhyde’s native American right hand man, Nat Colorado (Adam Beach) and preacher/doctor Meacham (Clancy Brown), a mysterious plot device named Ella (Oliva Wilde) among others to defeat the aliens and rescue their captives.

So, let’s start with the positives, and there are plenty to go about. The characters, whilst they all have their dislikeable traits, also have enough likeable traits that we’re rooting for them. Dollarhyde’s loyalty to his family shines here, as well as Longergan’s ruthless compassion with a badass twist. Colorado gets his moments to shine as he respects the fallen and finds inner strength and Meacham, well he’s played by Clancy Brown, which is worth 2 points in my book.

The acting in this is excellent, including star of the Last Airbender Noah Ringer who proves that his poor performance in that was down to M Night Shyamalan’s abysmal directing. There are also some great stunts and practical effects, particularly in the first half of the movie. Some of the CG also looks really good, really when it’s relegated to background elements.

The movie is, to me, at its best when it’s dealing with its more grounded, western elements, unfortunately many of the weaker aspects of the film are tied down to the sci-fi and suspense elements of the film. The first issue is that whilst in a good suspense film you see the build-up of the power of the creature, their hand is played way too early, the attack at the beginning of the film shows off the aliens pretty much at the height of their power, meaning there’s little to surprise us for the rest of the film.

We find out later in the film the aliens (which look terrible – or like alien rip-offs) are after the planet’s gold because what else would they be after in a western. This somehow involves wiping the memories of select human witnesses and leaving enough alive that could enact a plan to destroy them using a weapon that was conveniently left for the protagonist, who himself was an abductee, to put on and it ultimately becomes the key to saving everyone.

I’ve put this off long enough, let’s talk about Ella, the one character in the movie I did not care for, and what a shocker, she’s the love interest for the movie. She suffers a heavy injury about half way though the film and is presumed dead. In a jump-cut they’re caught by the local Native American tribe and she is burned. During the period of her burning she comes back to life and reveals that she is an alien who these aliens have targeted before and has plenty of plot convenient knowledge that ultimately proves essential in her sacrificing herself to save humanity by completely atomising the space ship. She has very little character outside of love interest and plot device and, whilst her actor is fine, is the low point of the movie for me.

The movie tries to cross two genres that really have no business crossing and the end result is a confused mess that becomes reliant on two exceptional contrivances for the plot to move forward, the end result is reasonably entertaining but equally frustrating experience.

Rating 55/100

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Images/clips used are from Cowboys & Aliens. All images in this review are subject to fair use