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.
At this point the aliens show up in force, and without giving too much away … ***SPOILER ALERT*** … let’s just say that they fly around in scout ships that look suspiciously like Apache spears with feathers, they prospect for gold, they lasso people and carry them off to use as … slave labor? trail grits? I’m still not sure which … and they otherwise look like a genetic cross between the creatures from Steven Spielberg’s other recent properties, Falling Skies and Super 8. ***END OF SPOILERS*** On this point I give Favreau and his team very low marks for the originality of the aliens or their mission; these really seem like off-the-shelf aliens from your local hobby store or from late-night TV.
In the midst of all this, by the way, we’re learning more about Jake Lonergan’s past as ***SPOILER ALERT*** … a bad-ass bandito, who lost his mojo when he fell for a prostitute with a heart of gold … ***END OF SPOILERS*** … and about his past with The Colonel, along with his horrific experiences as an alien abductee. And we’re also getting a sense of The Colonel’s limitations as a man – he’s another Spielbergean ‘bad father,’ if you can believe it! Plus we’re getting smallish doses of – and some tasteful semi-nudity from – Olivia Wilde, who has her own mysterious past with the aliens.
It’s all quite mysterious, you see, but not very fun or amusing – which you’d think a film called Cowboys & Aliens with a former comic as its director would be.
As for Ms. Wilde, she has the thankless task here of not only being Craig’s love interest (good luck with that!), but of selling some highly dubious plot twists regarding her character that nearly took me right out of the film. The fact that she was half-naked while explaining these plot twists helped less than you might think.
The film finally builds to a storm-the-barricades confrontation between the aliens and cowboys (and Apaches) at the alien lair, where we finally get to see the sort of cowboy vs. alien combat the film has been vaguely promising all along. Here again, though, the film disappoints. Nothing creative is made of the opportunity, certainly nothing you can’t already see on Falling Skies every week. I wanted to see Apaches picking off the aliens with arrows, cowboy bullwhips cracking on alien backs, aliens getting mowed down by Gatling guns. Something! Instead we just get very standard action set-ups that I’d expect on TV, but not in a $160 million summer tentpole movie.
Also, although these aliens were apparently intelligent enough to construct starships and fly all the way across the galaxy, they otherwise seem dumber than chimpanzees – doing little more than growling and snorting and biting people, when they’re not otherwise giving them IV’s in some filthy alien clinic. It’s a let down.
Directors like James Cameron and Michael Bay are working very hard these days to innovate and create huge sci-fi spectacles that can get people out of their homes – and away from Netflix – and into theaters again. Ironically enough, that’s also what director John Ford did decades ago when he sensed the Western slipping in the public’s esteem, spurring him to go out and make vast VistaVision/Super Panavision spectacles like The Searchers and Cheyenne Autumn, or the gigantic How the West Was Won in Cinerama. Although it may bear some superficial resemblance to those films, Cowboys & Aliens really has no such ambitions; it’s basically a movie that’s just riding a Hollywood trend – several trends, actually – and hoping that its alien-addled audience (they ran the Battleship trailer before the film) doesn’t notice.
I was expecting more from this team, possibly even a classic. Was that too much to ask? Not really. I remember the last few times Harrison Ford went up against aliens. Those films were much better.
Posted on July 29th, 2011 at 8:51pm.
Incidentally in regard to the Frisco Kid. I read that John Wayne was offered and accepted a role in The Frisco Kid by Gene Wilder(according to Gene’s biography) for The Dukes standard rate of $1 million a picture.(And think what these no talent hacks are paid today!) Then a suit from the studio showed up and tried to get him for less and he turned it down it down flat. The Duke was an underrated comedic actor. Movies like McLintock, Hatari, Donovan’s Reef, The Quiet Man.
Sorry I digressed, I’m going to see Cowboy And Aliens tonight. You know how I feel about Daniel Craig…he needs to be replaced by Michael Fassbender immediately as James Bond.
Interesting. I saw McLintock recently on TCM and loved it. A really fun film.
I have not seen the film, but it was just hard to get interested to going out to the theatre view an awkward combination of genres, and judging by the box office returns, many others have felt the same way. I just wish Daniel Craig could spend his time on ensuring his next Bond film resembles Casino Royale and not Quantum of Solace, and as for Harrison Ford, he should hurry up on Indy V (the last one was the first film in ages where it looked he enjoyed himself in the part)
I agree with all that, although the prospect of Craig teaming with Sam Mendes on a Bond film isn’t very appetizing at the moment. I’m wishing we could speed past the next film and get to some new configuration of talent, which ideally (in my opinion) would be Michael Bay/Michael Fassbender.
Given Sam Mendes’ films are usually rife with sanctimonious, I’m-smarter-than-you liberalism, I am not too enthusiastic either. Fassbender would make a good Bond, although I would rather see Ridley Scott or Michael Mann take over the series
Scott’s probably too old to take that on, at this point. I think Michael Mann would be a wonderful choice, who would probably take the series in interesting directions.
This just in. Cowboys and Aliens beaten at box office by FN Smurfs.
Oh the humiliation.
http://tinyurl.com/3dv22lt
My goodness is that humiliating. Ouch.
First the good……Clancy Brown as Preacher Meacham. I felt his character displayed Christianity in a modest yet positive light. Also the brief prayer at his funeral was decent.
The bad……..everything else with Daniel Craig as the largest piece on the scat list. Jason, there’s so many things wrong with this movie it’s honestly not worth me lamely rehashing your review. The only thing that surprised me is that it was not worse.
I’d look forward to Rise of the Planet of the Apes but…….
I thought the prayer at the funeral was an effort to recapitulate such moments from John Ford films. It was one of many things about this film that simply left me wanting to see the original article, as it were.
The same applies to Olivia Wilde, whose appeal continues to elude me.
The town of Absolution? Woodrow Dolarhyde? Does all this take place in On The Nose County?
I suppose it could work if you assume that the ships are off-the-shelf technology the aliens could buy or steal but probably couldn’t manufacture for themselves – like illiterate, drug-addled third-world militiamen driving around in old Toyota pickup trucks with Soviet machine guns bolted to the back, shooting up defenceless villagers. In fact, it’s a pretty good angle for a movie like this: it presents the aliens as a serious threat, but still makes it plausible that they could be defeated by people armed with 19th century weapons. It’s a shame that, judging by your review, it’s an angle the filmmakers don’t seem to have thought of.
1) Believe me, you’re giving this far more thought than they did – although I love your analogy of the Third World militiamen driving Toyotas with bolted-on Soviet hardware. Actually, maybe that’s the sort of truck I’ll drive next …
2) The jury is still out on Olivia Wilde.
3) Many Westerns these days are shot near Symbolic Canyon, between Deep Meaning Wells and Forced Analogy Gulch.
Those are the kind of aliens Stephen King gave us in Tommyknockers.
Never read or saw that.
Going OT on “the Frisco Kid” again…that was a weird flick…but I recall that it was very funny and strangely touching…
I seem to remember liking it at the time, but finding it strange …
Did not think “warm” was necessary for Craig’s role. He was the best thing in it. I worry that Brits and Aussies are more compelling cowboys (Bale, Crowe, now Craig) than homegrown heroes. Add that to no American has won a Boston Marathon for over 25 years…and Obama is our “leader” and I get blue.
But it was fun just to see how they would play it out Okay…mostly with souped up cliches’. A fast pace blurs much analysis. Also Harrison Ford seemed to labor, Overall Jason got it pretty close to what I saw.
Thanks for your thoughts, Bread.
First … that’s another fantastic review, Jason. Y’all here at Libertas are truly at the head of the class.
I couldn’t agree more with your assessment of Daniel Craig. His inability to connect, or break from that “rugby player” as you said, really showed in a few moments at the end of the picture. By contrast, Harrison Ford did his usual solid job of balancing the rough edges with the more inviting characteristics. Is there anyone that’s more of a bore than Ford off screen, and then warmer on screen?
While, I agree with you that the film doesn’t excel as sci-fi or a western, I think it has bigger issues: It’s thematic elements are just too loose to tie the narrative together. That’s fine, because, for the most part, I liked the characters, and they were enough to push the picture into satisfying escapism, but it missed its chance to be more.
This probably comes from having multiple groups of screenwriters. Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman’s marks were all over the script … namely an icy efficiency. You can almost look at your watch at the 30- and 90-minute marks to see where points of interest are going to be. These guys are good, but they need to put down the Syd Field books and loosen up a little.
On the culture warrior side, I was happy to see a former Confederate not being treated as evil. Ford’s character really reminded me John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards in “The Searchers.” I also appreciate the way the Apaches were portrayed: They were good, but not noble savages in the idiotic James Cameron sense, and capable of their own acts of high-level violence. It was also nice to see them all work together — there’s actually a lot of historical precedence for that.
What I loved about the film was the sense of regular people getting together to fight this threat. Harrison Ford’s line about calling in the Army was CLASSIC. It went a little something like this: “You want me to call some West Pointer, so he can ask Washington what hand to wipe his ass with???”
Also, Olivia Wild’s character’s little revelation didn’t take me out of the film, but rather it expanded the universe a bit for me. It got my imagination going — there really seemed to be some bigger things going on out there. Her character’s sacrifice and resurrection elements really went the Christian motifs of the picture as well.
Vince, thanks for the kind word, as always.
I love your comment about putting down the Syd Field book! I know what you mean. The film felt like something constructed in a screenwriting seminar out of bits and pieces of other films, co-ordinated with Swiss watch efficiency toward a (mostly) predictable end. I caught all the references to The Searchers and Red River, etc., but they struck me as being ‘references’ rather than something organic to the material. This goes as well for the Christian themes, which came across to me as mechanical and uninspired – like calling the town ‘Absolution,’ for instance. I’d rather they just call it something like Big Dude Ranch City, and be done with it.
Anyway, Ford certainly earned his pay on this – he usually does – and I’m glad to see that he’s set to play an old Wyatt Earp in an upcoming film. He would seem to be perfect for that at this point.
Jason, your review and the ensuing comments makes me want to watch ‘The Frisco Kid’ more than anything else at the moment!
Cool! Tell me what you think once you’ve seen it! I haven’t watched it in years …