Cowboys & Aliens

The American West of the 19th Century. There has never been a time or place quite like it. Countless stories of brave men (and sometimes women) tackling the dangerous frontier and all its perils. Settlers and cowboys have had to fight many things, such as gangs, Injuns, and flying Aliens. Wait, what? Little green men in flying saucers, against ragged s***-kickers? As crazy as that sounds, it’s the genuine plot of “Cowboys & Aliens”, one of the weirdest ideas for a movie in a long time.

The year is 1873. A ragged man wakes up in the barren hills of Arizona with no memory or even a name. The only things he has include a bad wound on his stomach, and a large metal bracelet on his left hand. Three riders approach him, assume he’s a runaway bandit, and attempt to capture this man but he beats them all to death. Taking their horses, and a mangy dog, he rides into a nearby town where trouble continues to follow him. This man-with-no-name is played by Daniel Craig (Layer Cake, Casino Royale) with the same quiet intensity After silencing a spoiled gun shooter and stopping at the saloon to have a drink, the Sheriff announces him to be Jake Lonergan, a dangerous outlaw and thief. Meanwhile, the wild but naive gunslinger Percy, a cowardly Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood, Where the Wild Things Are), has a gruff daddy who wants to come get him out of jail. An old Civil War vet, the Colonel is as mean as a cattle rustler can be. Of course when it’s Harrison Ford (Star Wars, Indiana Jones) you can’t get much tougher! Colonel is about to force the Sheriff to let the boy go when suddenly there’s a strange light in the sky. It disappears for a moment, then suddenly there are explosions in the streets. People are being lassoed up and taken away by flying machines, including young Percy. However, Jake’s little arm clamp starts blinking and props up a light display . With it, Jake is able to shoot down one of the flying ships, but no luck getting anyone back. The Colonel is not satisfied, so he gets his men together to follow the demons into the desert to get his son back, but he’ll need Jake to do it. Jake will need to jog his memory to find out his role in all this.

So with a weird idea being produced by Brian Grazer (Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind) and directed by Jon Favreau (Elf, Iron Man), you might think this has something big in store for the summer audience. It does not. The characters are rejects from “Deadwood”, Craig is sorely miscast, even Olivia Wilde (Tron: Legacy, The Change-Up) can’t do anything here but stand naked and make her eyes really big. The Aliens are nothing new and hardly intelligent, searching for gold. Overall this movie is a mess. The only decent thing is the action, which fight choreography helps Craig really kick some ass.

“Cowboys & Aliens” is an odd failure, in that it tried to create an irreverent eye-candy movie for young and old audiences that Universal Pictures needs in their lousy year. The Western has come a long way since 1903′s “The Great Train Robbery”, let’s hope it doesn’t stray any further.