Review | Cowboys and Aliens
Rarely do you get a movie title so frank about its genre-mashing B-grade origins but while Cowboys and Aliens might sound like pure grindhouse pulp on paper, the middling film plays things surprisingly straight.
In 1873 the railway isn’t the only thing to make its way out West, it seems the rough and rowdy frontier folk of Arizona have an alien invasion on their hands. Bombarding settlement towns with advanced munitions and kidnapping villages with insectoid airships, the extra terrestrials don’t have a clear agenda but whatever the plan it’s clearly bad news for the home team.
While a six-gun isn’t much of a match against death rays one particularly rugged hombre manages to escape his interstellar captors with everything but his memory in tact. Awaking thoroughly confused in the rocky desert, the survivor discovers a strange metal gauntlet clamped to his wrist and makes tracks to the nearest town to find answers (after first killing the hell out of a few highwaymen for good measure).
When he arrives in the portentously named town of Absolution our mystery man manages to fill in some of his larger memory blanks, though it’s not altogether good news. He’s an outlaw name Jake Lonergan, wanted by the town’s dogged sheriff for a string of crimes including stealing gold from a wealthy, vicious cattle rancher who is also looking to settle the score.
Before the inevitable three-way gunfight can go down, however, alien scout ships hit the town and those who aren’t killed or captured are forced to burry their differences and give chase. While such a self-conscious genre mash-up was always going to be a light-hearted affair, the film goes to length to make sure its macho heroes swagger with as much violent bravado as an M-rating allows.
As the box office goes Cowboys and Aliens’ biggest draw is its acting talent, with a roster of actors that not only have immense popular appeal but who, by and large, actually deserve it too. Daniel Craig plays the stoic outlaw hero with effortless physicality and just enough over-his-head arrogance to be charming (though whoever chose his goofy, three-sizes-too-large hat should be drawn and quartered). He’s forced to play nice with nasty civil war vet Woodrow Dolarhyde, played typical scenery chewing intensity by Harrison Ford. Stalwarts like Sam Rockwell, Paul Dano and Keith Carradine make up an unassailable supporting crew.
Director Jon Favreau has found great success in ditching his indie roots for Hollywood adventure romps, such as family-friendly Zathura and comic high-point Iron Man. While the director has again managed to rope in a top-shelf cast, whip up action at a slick pace and give the production an appealingly stylised veneer Cowboys and Aliens is ultimately let down its painfully mediocre screenplay.
Despite the teasing intrigue of its tight opening scenes – creatures from beyond, a murderer without memory, a sultry cowgirl with a mysterious secret – the bulk of the film plays out with disappointing predictability. In fact things go so maddeningly according to plan that by the third act viewers are left hoping some horrendously contrived plot twist will crop up to upset the forgone conclusion. Alas, it’s not to be – the outlaw with heart of gold get the girl, saves the world and everyone goes home for whiskey shots and line dancing.
It’s not quite idiosyncratic enough to be a true B-grade homage, nor ballsy enough to be a brains-off splatter fest; it’s too salty for the little ones and lacks the teeth to please either Deadwood or Alien fans. A film stuck squarely in the middle of the road, trying to keep so many people happy that it ends up pleasing very few.
Cowboys and Aliens would almost certainly have been a doomed venture if not for the steady hand of a reliable director and almost bulletproof cast lifting an unapologetically lacklustre script to tolerable territory.
Cowboys and Aliens is available now on Blu-ray and DVD, click here to win a copy.
