A film review by Craig J. Koban August 3, 2011

COWBOYS & ALIENS

2011, PG-13, 118 mins.

Daniel Craig: Jake Lonergan/ Harrison Ford: Col. Dolarhyde / Olivia Wilde: Ella / Sam Rockwell: Doc / Adam Beach: Nat / Paul Dano: Percy / Noah Ringer: Emmett / Keith Carradine: Sheriff Taggart / Clancy Brown: Meacham

Directed by Jon Favreau / Written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby

COWBOYS & ALIENS is what I like to call a P.W.P. film, or more specifically a film containing a premise without payoff.  

Its almost giggle inducing title promises something novel and unique, but despite the potential for innovation by combining two of the most tried and true of all movie genres, all we are left with is a serviceable western cross pollinated with a clichéd and perfunctory sci-fi alien invasion flick.  COWBOYS & ALIENS is more of a disposable and disappointing mishmash of the more cockamamie conventions and contrivances of both aforementioned genres than a transcendently imaginative effort.  Worse yet is that it squanders real opportunities to deal with the more amusingly incongruent elements of its genre marriage.   

Here’s another problem with the film (very loosely adapted from the 2006 Platinum Studios Comics graphic novel of the same name by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, Fred Lante, and Andrew Foley): one of its strengths is paradoxically also one of its key weaknesses.  Director Jon Favreau – a headstrong and talented filmmaker (see the first IRON MAN and MADE) – grounds the utterly batty premise of the film in a tangible reality that you can readily believe in.  He creates a credibly gritty, dusty, sun-drenched, and sepia-toned western that’s as tactile as just about any, which assists viewers with later buying into the concept of aliens invading its late 19th Century locales; Favreau's direction and his cast play things relatively straight.  

Yet, that's the problem too: COWBOYS & ALIENS plays things…well…too relatively straight for its own good and just may be the most serious silly film I have ever seen.  Attempts at, say, self-deprecating humor are all but absent, as are any labors to work some social and cultural satire into the proceedings.  I never gained an overreaching sense that Favreau and company were having any tongue-in-cheek fun with the material and its possibilities. 

The story at least begins with a real gumption, intrigue, and plot propelling hook: It’s 1875 in Arizona and a Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) awakens in the middle of nowhere: he is wounded, bloodied, sweaty, and has a very peculiar bracelet on his wrist that looks almost too high tech for modern times.  What's worse is that he has zero memory of who he is and what has happened to him.  He does, at least, remember how to defend himself like any Man With No Name would, as he more-than-easily dispatches with a group of bounty hunters who look to nab what they believed was easy, wounded prey.   

Realizing that he is vulnerable out in the scorching environmental elements, Jake decides to seek the nearest town, the wonderfully named Absolution, which seems to be made up of regurgitated parts of many movie western town/backlot exteriors.  After getting some medical attention and advice from a local preacher, Jake finds himself in the middle of a scuffle with Percy Dolarhyde (Paul Dano, very good a playing preening little pricks, but underused here), who is the arrogantly self-important son of his Civil War Colonel/veteran father, Woodrow (Harrison Ford).  Percy's papa has a great deal of influence in Absolution because of his lucrative cattle business.  Nonetheless, Percy likes to terrorize the good people of Absolution, that is until Jake teaches him an embarrassing - and very public - lesson in manners.   

Unfortunately for Jake, his actions catch the attention of the local sheriff (David Carradine) who is convinced that he is a wanted murderous gang leader.  He approaches Jake in a local salon in hopes of peacefully arresting him, but things soon spiral out of control.  Before the bar brawl, though, Jake caught the attention of Ella (Olivia Wilde, harbinger of perhaps the most piercingly beautiful eyes of the movies) who seems to take great interest in his plight and seems to also deduce that he has memory issues.  When it appears that the sheriff is failing to apprehend Jake, Ella, for reasons not initially explained, cold cocks Jake from behind, which leads to his arrest.   

Soon afterwards Colonel Dolarhyde arrives in town seeking out his troublesome son…and this is when all otherworldly hell breaks loose and strange lights from the sky are revealed to be alien craft that seem to take great relish in swooping in and kidnapping men, women, and children alike where they stand in Absolution.  Mere pistols and shotguns are no match against extraterrestrial weaponry, but when Jake’s bracelet awakens and he realizes that he can use it as a pulsating weapon that can cause the enemy ships to fall with one precise shot, the townspeople realize that he will be needed to go on a mission to recover their kin and defeat these “demons” in battle. 

Again, COWBOYS & ALIENS has a terrific hook to lure you into its strange storyline, and the opening sections that show Jake trying to pathetically piece together moments of his recent past create a sense of narrative momentum.  Regrettably, once the initial alien invasion of Absolution – during which Favreau does a wise thing of not really showing too much of the out-of-this-world beasties, mostly leaving them in ill defined shadows – there is a scandalous lack of story progression in COWBOYS & ALIENS, let alone character development.  Part of the issue is that the script has been worked on by nearly a dozen screenwriters over its years of development (never a good sign) one of which is the co-creator of LOST himself, Damon Lindelof.  Instead of intrepidly taking this weird hybrid film into daring and fruitful territories, Lindelof and company instead settle for paint-by-numbers alien invasion conceits and the more mediocre stock traits of the western.  

Consider, if you will, the alien’s plan itself, which I will not spoil, other than to say that you will really want to throw something at the screen when it’s revealed, seeing as it is all that a multitude of screenwriters could come up with.  I am not altogether sure why beings capable of faster-than-light interstellar travel would bother for something so…ultimately trivial.  The creatures themselves are horribly dull and uninspiring creations: films like this and the more recent SUPER 8 prove that Hollywood is really starved for finding fresh and rejuvenating ways to present alien life forms on screen.  In COWBOYS & ALIENS they are big, slimy, and lethally fast, yes, but as far as being scary, thrilling, and evoking a sense of wide-eyed wonder…a resounding no. 

There is, of course, an obligatory climax that manages to team up cowboys and Indians alike (they’re union is another of the film’s more hammy and poorly tacked on elements) versus the alien mother ship and its inhabitants, which is certainly professionally rendered and expensive looking (the CGI effects by Industrial Light and Magic are top notch) and Favreau has a clean and well delineated manner of framing the chaos (a welcome relief from the typical, Michael Bayian overkill that typifies summer tentpole films).   Yet, by the time the film built to this orgy of sights, sound, and fury I found myself checking my watch perhaps more than I should have for a summer action picture.  COWBOYS & ALIENS is overlong in its third act and it seems to take forever for the humans to stage their epic comeuppance against their more technologically advanced opponents.  In-between all of this we are dealt with some awfully inexplicable and eye rolling plot developments that seem written in for the purposes of convenience; don’t get me started on the character of Ella.   

There’s much to admire in COWBOYS & ALIENS: Favreau’s proficient and easy-on-the-eyes direction, the film’s lived-in look, its virtuoso visual effects and production design, and, yup, a nifty premise on paper.  I also liked Daniel Craig’s steely-eyed and twitchy-trigger fingered magnetism and David Carradine’s stalwart and nuanced portrayal of Absolution’s no-nonsense sheriff.  Yet, the much ballyhooed cinematic pairing of James Bond and Indiana Jones is a letdown, to be sure.  Craig may have a crackling and unpredictable fiery edge in the film, but Ford really seems to be slumming though yet another in a long recent line of flat, monotone, and gravel voiced performances playing cantankerous codgers.  Even though he has the film’s only involving monologue – relaying how he slit another man’s throat as a child – Ford seems to spend most of the film bewildered and unsure of what he’s doing.   

COWBOY’S & ALIENS should have been an unqualified blockbuster homerun considering the immensity of talent on board: a gifted audience-friendly director, two titanic stars of action film franchises, and multiple Oscar winning producers with the names of Spielberg and Howard.  It’s not that the film was overhyped as much as it was maybe overqualified in the credits department.  With just the right sly and subversive scripting COWBOYS & ALIENS could have easily been this summer’s DISTRICT 9 (another far more valiantly original alien-invasion film that truly transcended its dime-a-dozen premise), but instead it emerges as one of the season's more sub-standard offerings.  It also shows that even if you have a wickedly audacious concept (aliens-on-the-western-frontier) that alone cannot propel the film successfully forward.  COWBOYS & ALIENS is all setup without a dramatically sizeable payoff that surprisingly never really gestates into anything thoroughly compelling.  For lack of a better phrase, it’s a star-studded and multi-million dollar budgeted plate full of…meh.