CAST: Olivia Wilde, Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, Sam Rockwell, Clancy Brown, Paul Dano, Keith Carradine, Abigail Spencer,, Ana de la Reguera, Noah Ringer; DIRECTOR: Jon Favreau; SCREENWRITER: Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Damon Lindelof, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby; PRODUCER: Alex Kurtzman, Scott Michelle Rosenberg, Roberto Orci, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard; EDITOR: Dan Lebental, Jim May; MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Harry Gregson-Williams; GENRE: Action/Adventure, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Thriller, Western & Adaptation; CINEMATOGRAPHER: Matthew Libatique; DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures; LOCATION: USA; RUNNING TIME: 118 minutes.
Technical Assessment: 3.5
Moral Assessment: 3
CINEMA Rating: For viewers age 14 and above.
A stranger (Daniel Craig) who knows and remembers nothing except the English language stumbles into a desert town named Absolution with a shackle around one wrist. Lean and mean, he s a gunslinger and is feared from the start, but when recognized as the wanted criminal Jon Lonergan, he becomes the target of the town’s iron-fisted ruler Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford). Absolution’s town folks live in fear but the fear of human tyrants turns into terror of the unknown when the town is attacked by screaming aliens who set it on fire and abduct townsfolk at random. Then the mysterious stranger Lonergan becomes the town’s sole hope for salvation. Lonergan slowly starts to recall who he is and where he’s been, and discovers the power behind the shackle on his wrist. Aided by another mysterious traveler Ella (Wilde), Lonergan forms a posse oddly composed of his opponents, Dolarhyde and his cohort, outlaws, Apache warriors. They have one thing in common: their survival is threatened by the aliens.
The title sounds jokey, but the movie is not. It’s in fact a cross between a class B Western (set in 1873) and class B science fiction, but in fairness, director Jon Favreau makes the odd combination work, turning it into light entertainment that is never too funny to look trivial. But maybe because at this point, one cannot imagine a movie being that funny when Daniel Craig is in it, he who plays characters in movies that forbid him to smile. Besides, Craig is, after all, still James Bond in the back of our mind, nobody to fool around with. That may not be too good for Craig’s career in the long run. Stereo-typing equals predictability, see? It’s bad for the box office. But let’s focus on Cowboys and Aliens for now. Technically it’s okay, even surprising at some turns in spite of its computer generated protagonists, and with some big names in the kitchen like Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and Brian Gazer, the viewer is assured the storyline is worth the time it takes to finish a bucket of popcorn in the theater.
Cowboys and Aliens is “new” in the sense that the good guys and the bad guys of the traditional Westerns here stop trying to annihilate each other and instead merge to fight off the extraterrestrials. When enemies unite to reduce collateral damage by saving the innocent, that’s good for planet earth, isn’t it? When bad guys rise to goodness and good guys rise to heroism, the transformation does everyone a lot of good, correct? Cowboys and Aliens is strong on promoting the family, too, and that makes it easier for the viewer to close an eye on its Western style and CGI violence. There’s a part where a character complains that God hasn’t done much for him, and another answers to the effect that we shouldn't expect God to do everything—we have to “earn His presence... recognize it, and act on it”. Not a bad message for a movie that aims to be a different Western, one with aliens with secret inner parts that unfold from their chest cavities—like the lethal drills that protrude from James Bond’s car tires—to rip humans open.
