Cowboys and Aliens

Cowboys and Aliens. Two things that generally don't go together. But, they are both very good things, so I suppose it's fair enough that someone one day would think it would be a good idea to put the two of them together, in a movie. Now the day has finally come when someone DID put them together. The result is one silly as hell movie.

The movie starts off with Jake Lonergan (played by Daniel Craig) in an empty desert with no memory of who he is and a strange device strapped to his wrist. After failing to get the device off his wrist, he travels to a nearby town looking for clues of his past. In town, he runs afoul of Percy Dolarhyde (played by Paul Dano - Eli Sunday from There Will be Blood), the son of wealthy cattle merchant Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), known for being a ruthless business man and even more ferocious warrior. After causing a minor incident, the pair are locked up in jail for the night. Word gets to Woodrow, who makes his way to the town in order to bail out his son, and his arrival coincides with the first wave of alien visitors, who start snatching citizens and carrying them off. It's then up to Lonergan and Dolarhyde along with the townfolk including Ella (Olivia Wilde) to locate and rescue their missing kinsmen.

Let me start off by saying that this is one huge clusterfuck of a movie. It's confused narratively, the plot scarcely makes any kind of sense. To me it seemed as though they created the title of the movie and then tried to make a plot make sense to fit it. It's filled with so many cliches that it makes your head spin, and as for character development, good luck trying to find ANY. That all being said, I will give credit to Daniel Craig - he's the only part of this movie that's worth watching, as he kicks ass all the way to the alien ship and back. Olivia Wilde's character literally does not make any sense, it seems like she was just thrown in there because the producers wanted to have a female body to look at. And as much as I love Harrison Ford for being the scoundrel known across the galaxy as Han Solo, his efforts in this flick are truly sub-par.

Visually the film looks alright, the graphics for the ships and aliens are pretty on point, but as we all know, a movie these days can't just be about how good the graphics are, or they will fail utterly. Cowboys and Aliens seems just that - an effects driven vehicle that discards sense for scenery.

Not much more to say about this flick except that even given my low expectations, it underperformed severely. Don't see this movie unless you like movies about Aliens who like to touch little boys and ride dong shaped spaceships that are fuelled by gold. Just, extremely silly stuff.

Final Score: 4/10