Cowboys & Aliens Released 19 August 2011 Director Jon Favreau Starring Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Abigail Spencer, Clancy Brown, Paul Dano, Adam Beach Writer(s) Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby Producer(s) Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lidelof, Roberto Orci, Scott Mitchell Rosenberg Origin United States Running Time 118 minutes Genre Action, sci-fi, thriller Rating 15A

38

Chalk and cheese.

When I first heard the title of Cowboys & Aliens, my initial thought was ‘Oh Jesus’. In an ideal world someone would have sat director Jon Favreau (Swingers, Monica’s rich boyfriend from Friends) down and explained to him why this genre mash-up was ill-conceived, like a parent explaining to their child why you can’t put ice-cream on your cornflakes.

The movie tells the story of aliens who have come to the dusty town of Absolution because they want to mine the town’s gold. A novel premise, perhaps, but one so utterly ridiculous that a lot of piss needed to be taken in order for this movie to work, when in fact, it is disturbingly earnest.

It stars Daniel Craig, who has used his down time from the Bond franchise to spread his acting wings by taking an erm, all out action role. Sometimes I wonder did the Englishman’s mother take botox when she was pregnant with him, a man with a face so wooden that activists have threatened to chain themselves to him if anyone ever tries to cut him down.

A substantial body is a pre-requisite for any would-be action hero so Craig has naturally beefed-up enormously over the years. The problem is that his tiny head on such a massive body looks incongruous. It reminds me of The Princess and the Pea, except with the pea placed on top of the mattresses and speaking in an English accent. With a head like that, he should have the body of an accountant.

Craig plays Jake Lonergan, a gunslinger, who awakes in the wilderness with his memory wiped. As he tries to figure out who he is in Absolution, aliens start capturing innocent people and attacking the town. An enigmatic woman, who turns out to be from another planet, takes human form to come warn the Earthlings of the dangers of total annihilation. She provides Lonergan’s love interest, which is a little disturbing, as species from different planets should not be attracted to each other. This, quite frankly, is bestiality. The climax to this silliness comes when our hero needs to stop thinking in order for an alien bracelet to fall off his wrist, so the female alien/human kisses him to achieve this. I can see where she is coming from, but personally my mind would be racing. “To what extent is she alien?”, “How human is her form really?”, “How much time we got?” etc, etc.

The film also stars Harrison Ford, as the iron-fisted Woodrow Dolarhyde, who dominates the town through fear and intimidation. Ford is a bit of a joke here which is unfortunate as he is only playing for laughs some of the time. He is a real tough guy at the outset but ultimately is soft on the inside. Like a Cadbury’s Creme Egg, in that he is overrated, but thankfully we only have to put up with for a small portion of the year.

If the devil is in the detail, then Satanophobics can rest easy while watching this. The western setting is acceptable but a little shiny and modern for my tastes. The special effects can be quite dazzling, full of zappy lights and many a good whoosh. It is the film’s conventionality that reduces its integrity. In the fight scenes, Craig routinely beats up three or four would be nemeses in around eight seconds. This kind of choreographed scene we have all seen at least a million times before and they nearly all start off with a lumberin’ eejit taking a big swing, the hero ducking and then elbowing a hapless dope in the face, before knocking out the last goon with a thunderous punch, the sound of which is like a dead pig slapping off a Parisian path having been thrown off the Eiffel tower.

The proliferation of ‘I love you’s and what can only be described as modern shifting dilutes the authenticity of the western setting too. I could stand corrected on this one but I just find it hard to imagine that romance back then was like a mixture of Grey’s Anatomy and Coppers.

The aliens too are disappointing. This was a great opportunity to re-imagine the physical form of our extra-terrestrial neighbours. Why does everyone imagine them the same way? A basically human shape complete with slimy, seaweedy, metallicy skin. Where is the imagination? Aliens could literally be anything you wanted them to be. To paraphrase Father Dougal McGuire instead of a mouth it could have four arses. Hollywood’s creatives could do far worse than watch David Attenborough’s films about deep sea creatures. Now there’s imaginative, and they actually exist.

So to sum up. Cowboys & Aliens is a pointless exercise in novelty. It is poorly written and flimsy and I feel they got the tone wrong. It should have been either a really realistic portrayal of what it actually might be like if aliens did visit the Earth during this period or a really silly satire that sends up the Western and Alien genres. Instead it is quite sincere but lacking any kind of depth. There is a slight religious undercurrent and a certain philosophical position (you make your own life, God doesn’t write it for you) but this doesn’t really give the film any substance. To give it its due though, there are quite a few funny moments but not enough to call this a comedy, which it really should have been. In short, it is boring.

- Eoin Murphy