Run Time: 118 minutes
Rating: 13+
In what can only be described as a fairly close contest, it’s fair to say the only thing more ludicrous than both the premise and execution of this film is the title.
Of course, there were always going to be two ways you could play a film as ridiculous as Cowboys and Aliens – take it seriously, or have a bit of fun with it. Director Jon Favreau unfortunately chooses the former, and the result is a disappointingly humourless movie that takes itself so seriously that it actually borders on the edge of caricature, and as a result, completely fails.
In the end, this is a nightmare almost on par to the sheer horror that was Wild, Wild West, Barry Sonnenfeld’s mash-up retro-futurist Western from 1999. It is a movie that might have been frankly better left as a throwaway joke, or a doodle on an executive’s notepad, but has instead made it through the system as a full-length feature film.
What can basically be surmised as James Bond and Indiana Jones fighting monsters from outer space in the Old West, Cowboys and Aliens is a leaden mash-up of western and science-fiction elements that ends up noisy, grotesque and unappealing.
Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) is the epitome of a taciturn Western hero, which is fine, but he’s surrounded by Western characters who act exactly as you would expect them to act – not only the wise, benevolent Sheriff, but also Meacham (Clancy Brown), a preacher who’s remarkably open-minded, as well as a bartender/medical doctor named, surprisingly, Doc (Sam Rockwell).
The stockpile of stereotypes rises higher with a wise and discreet Native American (Adam Beach), a loyal underling to Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) who treats the older man as his father, and a sad little boy (Noah Ringer) who helps soften up the cattle baron.
With a script eager to embrace every witless western chestnut — talking is “flapping your gums” to this crowd — and a passion for stock situations, Cowboys & Aliens displays one thumping cliché after another as if its bankrupt derivativeness was in some way reinventing the wheel.
On a positive note, the cinematography is top notch, with director of photography Matthew Libatique using some stunning shots to create an authentic American west setting (though stutters with some disorientating action sequences). That’s really where the good points about this movie end though.
It’s not that Cowboys & Aliens is bad, per se, just that it pokes along rather than galloping, and never really succeeds in cohesively gelling together two vastly divergent genres. It really wants to be a Western, but it’s a horse opera that relies upon the novelty of an alien invasion to perk up the plot, which dawdles when it needs to dash. There’s no real emotional bite to the loss of all the townspeople who got roped by riders in the sky; it’s just a device to herd the story along to its inevitable final battle.
In the end, both the cowboy and the alien halves of the venture play like tired retreads of once-vibrant material, and putting them together doesn’t disguise the deficiencies — it doubles down on the losses.
And so at its best, Cowboys and Aliens is a mediocre western movie. At its worst, it is a horrible mix of two already tired genres that fail to deliver any sense of cohesion. Combined with the fact that it takes itself way too seriously, this serves as little more than a warning for future ill-conceived genre mash-ups.
– Dane Halpin
1 star