COWBOYS & Aliens is the perfect title for a big summer blockbuster. It promises universal boyhood fantasies rolled into one epic action adventure.
Even better, it stars Indiana Jones and James Bond. What more could an audience want? Well, quite a lot actually starting with a better script, a more complex story and a less sluggish pace. No film could really fulfil the expectations of that title but Cowboys & Aliens does feel a little underwhelming.
It starts with all the promise of a classic Twilight Zone yarn. It is Arizona in 1873. In the middle of nowhere, a lone stranger awakes. He has a bloody wound in his side, a strange mechanical contraption strapped to his wrist and no memory of who he is or how he got there.
It must have been a heck of a party. He is quite literally the man with no name and we could be in the middle of a Clint Eastwood western. We quickly learn that he is a dead-eyed, merciless man of action when a posse tries to capture him and winds up paying dearly. It transpires that the stranger is one Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig), a man wanted for everything from arson to robbery.
He is soon under the lock and key of the sheriff (Keith Carradine) but not before tangling with local bully Percy (Paul Dano) who happens to be the son of cattle baron Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) a man who owns the town of Absolution. Just when you start to think how much you would like to see a real old-school western back on the big screen the other half of the plot arrives. Lights flicker in the sky. Strange metal flying machines roar down from the heavens.
The good folk of Absolution are scooped from the dusty streets the way a fly is trapped by the flicking arc of a toad’s tongue. Bullets prove useless in the face of such an attack but the strange metal gizmo on Jake’s arm springs into life and, when he points it in the direction of the attackers, all hell breaks loose. The remainder of the film is like Independence Day set in the wild, wild west as bickering humans are obliged to join forces if they are to stand any chance of defeating these pesky alien invaders.
Why have they come here? Gold. “It is as rare to them as it is to you,” explains mystery woman Ella (Olivia Wilde) who seems to know more than she is willing to admit.
Unfortunately that’s the only explanation we are going to get and it isn’t exactly satisfying. There are an awful lot of loose ends in the film and a good deal of inconsistency in the characterisation.
Harrison Ford’s Colonel starts off as the grumpiest man in the west but ultimately emerges as a big pussycat while Daniel Craig’s Lonergan is a dyed-in-the-wool villain who becomes the greatest hero of them all.
Perhaps it takes an alien invasion to reveal your true colours. Ford is in remarkably good nick for a man who has just entered his 70th year and a lean, brooding Craig is well cast as a merciless man of the west.
The film could have used a little more humour to balance what is often a very violent tale.
(Cert 12A; 118mins)
VERDICT: 3/5
See the trailer below:
See the pics from the London film premiere here
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