By Jason Apuzzo. Cowboys & Aliens is one of those movies that probably looked great on paper – like a development executive’s dream. Take a popular graphic novel that combines two of America’s most durable genres (the Western and sci-fi), cast Indiana Jones and the current James Bond, add the Iron Man director and current It-girl from Tron, plus Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard as producers – and you’ve got a sure-fire hit, right?
Right?
Alas, we all know that movies don’t work exactly that way. There’s actually something rather mysterious about what makes one film work – and a different film made by the same people, even on the same subject, fall flat. It’s a matter of what we usually call ‘chemistry’ or ‘inspiration.’
Cowboys & Aliens is not a bad film. It’s entertaining at times and works reasonably well as light summer entertainment – but it’s the cinematic equivalent of the ‘superteam’ Miami Heat, or the Lakers back when they had a roster that included Kobe, Shaq, Karl Malone and Gary Payton … and lost the title. It’s a film that doesn’t know what it wants to be, so it ends up being almost nothing. Unsatisfying as a Western, and clichéd as sci-fi – insufficient as a star vehicle, and thin as an action film – Cowboys & Aliens is a genre mash-up that never really settles on being any one thing, and left me bored and disinterested as a result.
Although Cowboys boasts two big leads, it’s mostly carried by Daniel Craig as Jake Lonergan – a man who, as the film opens, awakens in the desert in Jason Bourne-like fashion, having lost his memory but not his ability to kick peoples’ teeth in. Although he fights like a UFC mixed martial artist and shoots like Wyatt Earp, Jake can’t remember who he is, or why he has a strangely cauterized wound on his side, or why a bizarre slab of metal is wrapped around his wrist – like some sort of Stone Age Casio watch.
This is where the film makes its first mistake, in the casting of Daniel Craig. It’s time we acknowledge what has become obvious: which is that Craig, for what limited ability he’s shown in playing James Bond – limited, that is, to fight scenes – has neither the charisma, nor the warmth, nor the subtlety of person to really make a compelling, big-time movie star. It’s simply not there. Daniel Craig looks and acts like a rugby player, or maybe a bouncer – the sort of person who isn’t called upon on a regular basis to show vulnerability, or a sense of humor. (Qualities, incidentally, that his co-star Harrison Ford has specialized in over the past 35 years.) Think back to what Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson were like in their prime – and you’ll realize how dull Craig’s performances are these days. He’s Cowboys’ first and biggest problem.
Eventually Craig heads into the town of ‘Absolution’ (which is probably the sister city of ‘Obvious Metaphor’), one of those typical Western-movie towns in which everyone speaks in parables, and nobody seems to have bathed during the past year. (Was the West really like that? I doubt it.) After a series of brief fistfights and shoot-outs, none of which are especially electrifying, we learn that the town is basically run by cattle baron and former Confederate Army Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde (get it? he sells cattle!), played by Harrison Ford at his most grizzled. Ford seems to be channelling John Wayne’s character Thom Dunson from Red River here, as in vengeful fits he rides roughshod over the local sheriff, his men, and most particularly his worthless son. And of everyone involved in this film – and that includes the director, and the film’s eight writers – Ford is the only one who seems at home in this material, like he’s been itching to cut loose in a Western for decades. He’s ornery and authoritative, but always with a cracked smile and a twinkle in his eye. He’s trail boss, father figure and old coot all in one – and he’s good. You’ll be wishing this wasn’t his first Western since the bizarre The Frisco Kid (with Gene Wilder?!) back in 1979. Continue reading LFM Review: Cowboys & Aliens
