Movie Review: Cowboys & Aliens

Cowboys & Aliens     $$$

PG-13

118 Minutes

Starring: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Clancy Brown

Director: Jon Favreau

            This genre crossing movie opens with the main character (Daniel Craig) waking up in the desert. He’s wounded. He’s nearly naked except for a strange bracelet on his left wrist. Worst of all, he doesn’t know who he is or why he’s there.

            While he, and the audience, are still trying to work through the situation a trio of horsemen arrive and we gain our first revelation about the mysterious stranger. The horsemen decide to take him prisoner and see if there’s a bounty to be collected. He has different ideas on the matter and in quick order the three would be bounty hunters lie dead on the ground. This is obviously a dangerous man.

            Now clothed, armed, and with a horse the stranger rides into the nearest town just in time for an alien invasion. And wouldn’t you know it – the aliens are the key to discovering who he is and to finding the woman that keeps flashing into his thoughts.

            I gave Cowboys & Aliens a solid 3 rating because it was entertaining, original, and looked good (most of the time) on the big screen. Craig, Ford, and Brown did a good job with their characters and this was a story that caught my attention. I especially loved that we learned about the main character as he regained bits and pieces of his memory.

            However, I thought this film had some problems. This movie is violent. I’m not necessarily put off by a bunch of shooting and punching, but there was an almost excessive amount of it here. More problematic for me were what I feel are logic and continuity flaws. Why does the protagonist spend most of the time using an alien weapon to kill unarmed aliens? And shouldn’t the aliens be more proficient with their technology than some hick on a backwater planet? Most viewers will probably not care about any of that.

            I also found the alien CGI to be difficult to watch. Action scenes with them were too fast and too jerky for me to follow along. I ended up enjoying the western portions of this story than the alien ones. Still, it was a pretty good film overall.

            Randy’s Rating System

$$$$   = Full Price    See this movie right away and pay full price, it’s worth it.

$$$     = Matinee      Catch this as a matinee or other discounted showing.
$$        = Discount     Wait until this movie reaches a discount theater near you.
$          = Rental         Wait until this movie reaches your local video rental outlet.
0          = No Sale       Don’t see this movie at any price.