Jon Favreau's best known for directing both Iron Man films. Sadly his latest offering, Cowboys and Aliens, is more like Jonah Hex than High Noon. The film is not quite as bad as the former but still fails
to live up to its pedigree.
Multiple issues plague the film, but the biggest atrocity is
to somehow believe that a small group of cowboys could even attempt to take out
a much more technologically advanced enemy than themselves. Genre mash-ups are
usually hit or miss and this is definitely one that misses the mark.
The casting of the two male leads (Harrison Ford and Daniel
Craig) is not wholly inspiring but fun to see. Still I am forced to take note of what everyone else has
been telling me for years: Olivia Wilde is not a good actress. In the film her character is out of
place and you never feel an emotional connection to her. Whether that is her fault or not is not
the question "“ she isn't good either way.
The film opens up to a desert setting where an amnesiac is
suddenly woken with a wound in his abdomen and a large metal bracelet on his
wrist. He goes into town where he is subsequently arrested for a bevy of crimes
including arson and possible murder. The film does everything in its power to
make you forget his criminal introduction and hardly brings it up throughout
the rest of the film. It is as if
the events he set in motion were somehow justified.
Ford is absolutely riveting as a cattleman with a penchant
for intimidation. The two have to
band together along with other townspeople to rescue many of its citizens from
the clutches of aliens that look heavily stylized after Ridley Scott's film of
the same name.
The climax is hopeful if not at all disregarding any
historical basis of fact as to the relationship between white frontiersman and
Native Americans. Cowboys and Aliens
now belongs with a select group, including Jonah
Hex and Wild Wild West, of
western/sci-fi films released in summer that didn't end up being particularly
memorable.
