Cowboys and Aliens Review

Every once in a while a movie comes along that makes you re-think your life, question your ideals.  A film that questions our conventional thinking.

This isn’t that movie.

It is however a fantastic action film with plenty of character and enough humor to entertain even the stuffiest of viewers.  And in the end isn’t that what a movie is all about?  The fusion of two genres is never easy.  Especially two genre that are so stark in contrast.  The old west and sci-fi.  There have been attempts at this in the past (The exceptional TV show Firefly) have been mixed. Some good, some pretty horrible.  Luckily, Director Jon Favreau already has proven himself strong at making action films that are well rounded in every aspect, his last two films being Iron Man 1 and 2.

The story begins with a stranger with no memory of who he is, only a picture of a woman and a strange device attached to his wrist.  It’s not long before he finds town, if you can call it that.  Things haven’t been so good for the town since the gold dried up.  The only thing keeping it together is a ruthless cattle owner played by Harrison Ford.  And when the cattle are…well…blown up, things go from bad to worst.   Aliens attack the town using ships and abduct people in a very visually exciting way, including the cattle owners’ son.  Our hero is pulled along as he has the only device capable of taking down one of those ships and so our adventure begins.

I would like to point out that this could be one of Harrison Ford’s best roles since Indiana Jones.  He puts his all into the character, starting out as a dirty, ruthless ex-general turned dirty, ruthless owner into a somewhat softer would-be good guy thanks to great character interaction between him and a young child who somewhat reminds him of himself as a kid.  Daniel Craig did an equally good job as the stories amnesia induced hero.  The weakest point in the film was the inclusion of the Indian’s, the characters themselves were fine but they were introduced far too sudden that it just didn’t feel natural or convincing.  Despite that, it was pretty easy to get pulled into the film with the great cast and highly impressive action sequences that exceed even that of the Directors previous works.  It’s got great humor, solid characters and enough energy without going overboard to make this a perfectly balanced film that offers up something more unique from the norm.

9/10