Cowboys and Aliens was made for one reason – graphic novels have built-in fan bases. It’s an unfortunate mishmash of sci-fi and western, rather than a cohesive mashup of same, that’s just riddled with cliched writing and acting. You won’t want to suspend your disbelief so much as bungee jump it off the Burj Khalifa. Its plot barely works within the narrow confines of its dominant genre (western), and it offers one-note performances and even shallower special effects.
A man (Daniel Craig) awakes in the middle of Arizona in 1873 with a metal bracelet on his arm that just won’t come off, making it one heck of a lousy accessory. He knows nothing of himself or where he is. But that’s okay, because after quickly dispatching three gunmen who figure him for a runaway convict, he heads to the closest town, where he gets himself into trouble by kicking the son of the local Big Man squarely in the cojones.
You might be wondering where the aliens enter into this. Well, soon as our mystery man and the scion/scourge are locked in a wagon to take them to Santa Fe (not sure why, since they’re in Arizona and not New Mexico), aliens attack. They send out these robotic tentacles that grab various, mostly dispensable townsfolk and take them into their little scout ships. Our mystery man is able to destroy one, though, thanks to that nifty jewelry. Neat gadget, that.
The arrival of the spaceships befuddles the town, including local bad guy/Big Man Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), one of those typical iron-fisted, “I gave you your job!” yo-yos who feel that they own the town, which they often do. With perpetually gritted teeth and the occasional sneer, Ford tries very, very hard to be the bad guy, but he’s just not that good of an actor. It hurt to type that. He’s a terrific actor and makes a great hero, but he can’t do evil. Then again, the movie’s title might indicate that he’s not the focal bad guy anyway, right?
No one knows quite what to make of the spaceships arrival and quick disappearance, so everyone does what comes natural and rounds up a posse to track them down. It’s quite a posse, with Dolarhyde, our now-named hero Lonergan, a woman gunslinger (Olivia Wilde), a kid, some old fellers, a Native American (Adam Beach, who is always stuck with that role), and a dog.
The movie itself isn’t terribly noteworthy, as it takes the blandest, most-repeated aspects of each genre and beats them to death very slowly. Putting aliens in a wild-West setting is creative; doing nothing with that premise is a magnificent failure. The aliens, as bad as they may be, are hardly even seen until the third act, as much of the plot has to do with the unbending Dolarhyde and the taciturn Lonergan at loggerheads.
It’s another one of those movies where Harrison Ford has lost someone dear to him, whether it’s his wife (Frantic), his dad (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), or even his entire family (Firewall). Here, it’s his shiftless son, played by Paul Dano. For all of his efforts to find his boy, Dolarhyde spends little time interacting with him or even talking about him. For the Colonel, it’s all about running things and getting results. This is more of a Gene Hackman role than a Harrison Ford role. Ford’s effort here varies between constipated and ineffectual, depending on the needs of the plot.
The rest of the cast isn’t bad. Craig isn’t asked to do much other than look menacing and dish out some punishment, and he does both well. Wilde’s job is to look pretty and reveal a big secret. Sam Rockwell is the town doctor, a nebbish who (why not) must learn to shoot a gun while on the trail.
I won’t blame you if you don’t pardon this pun, but the movie is a misfire. It does have some real ugly aliens, though. But they seem easily thwarted, if you catch my drift. But a lot of things in the movie just didn’t make enough sense to sustain the creaky plot, anyway.
