Cowboys & Aliens

An “amazing” idea that managed to spoil the fourth Indiana Jones in a few seconds, stretched out into two hours. Initially, it looks good: Daniel Craig’s tough cowboy is cool, the western setting turned out well, the first contact with extraterrestrials is magical, the humor spot on, the visual effects perfect, and the aliens look much more impressive than the mole-like thing from Super 8. Starting with the scene of crawling out of a fire, however, things go downhill, and the subsequent deluge of cliché-ridden fast-brewing relationships between the characters and illogical moments in the action scenes just seals the movie’s sad fate. The screenwriters seemed to think that the more they go wild, the more the audience would enjoy it… Cowboys and Indians from the American Prairies, unite in an idealistic world against the alien Nazis who think of you as insects and want to steal your gold! - Bullshit. (2011-09-14)

I was really excited to see this, even despite the strange and incomprehensible story. I thought that nothing can be more surprising than a fight between the 19th century cowboys and aliens who decide to visit an arid town in the middle of the American prairie. Let’s face it, it was all a load of hogwash, but I must admit that I had fun. The actors were cool. Their performances were standard. Harrison Ford’s might have been a bit better. He’ll probably always be charismatic. In any case, the movie’s main currency were special effects – and the authors really put a lot of work into those. It’s true that the story starts getting insane halfway through, but I didn’t really mind that much. I enjoyed it and I think that at the cinema, this experience would’ve been on a whole new level. (2012-11-26)

What initially appears to be an unconventional B-movie, full of juicy visuals (you can see the signature the director of Iron Man), gradually turns into a pile of clichés and a dull display of various forms and quality of visual effects. It's been a long time since I've seen something so conceptually and dramaturgically mishandled, like the ending of this film. Cliché upon cliché – a final battle and a classic catharsis the likes I've seen a million times before. Perhaps nobody expected much from this film, judging by the title, and they won't get much either. I don't understand the insane budget. (2012-01-01)

Me and Craig have one thing in common, we both look pretty dumb in hats. But he’s a bit tougher than I am, so he can get away with wearing them in public. C&A is a fairly simple piece of idiocy that combines the most mundane from the world of westerns and sci-fi, well there’s a couple of interesting ideas (just what do those aliens want here), but you would expect that with such a horde of screenwriters (and not bad ones at that) they would come up with something really good. And Favreau usually does a much better job, saving the show with some playfulness, a certain detachment and Downey Jr., but he this time didn’t smuggle any of this into the movie. The aliens hide for too long and so we don’t have much of a chance to enjoy them in the first, cowboy-like, more tedious half. On the other hand, they do look great (and they are the only thing that Uncle Spielberg’s fatherly hand added), and maybe there is more to learn about them in the documentaries on the DVD. Gregson’s music works pretty well. The only thing I can give full marks to is the casting, Harrison is trying not to fall off the Jones comeback bandwagon and he does very well. And Olivia... oh my, Olivia, if you don’t drown in her delightful eyes, then her almost see-through dress will definitely get you. And at the end she has her hair in a ponytail... (2011-08-25)

Anyone want a screenwriter? Because Hollywood seems to have a surplus of them. Otherwise, I can't explain why Cowboys & Aliens was written by five people. And why their typewriters produced such a simple result. Nevermind. As you might have guessed, the story is the biggest (and actually the only) weakness of this film. I didn't mind that a bunch of cowboys went on the trail of a UFO just out of the blue, all convinced that "it was going where the machines went". It sounds naive, but that's just how every other thing was handled in the Wild West: Find a clue and follow it. I was more sorry about how the screenwriters botched the dialogue. They did give the tough Craig and the likeable grumpy Ford a few lines, but otherwise most of the dialogue felt heavily used. What I liked, on the other hand, was the effort not to make Cowboys & Aliens into a comedy or even a parody (I guess not enough time has passed since Wild Wild West and the filmmakers are still scared), but a full-fledged sci-fi movie. In this, I think, they succeeded, because the result is more reminiscent of The Valley of Gwangi than the aforementioned Wild Wild West. The dinosaurs may have been replaced by aliens, but no matter what situations the characters get into, you still get the feeling that you're watching a (slightly different) western that is sympathetically lightened by humor here and there and where the action is just right. The special effects are an entirely separate chapter. ILM is simply ILM, and so the alien craft look absolutely superb and irresistibly mechanical, behaving realistically like jet fighters of today, leaving a smoke trail behind them and their engine making a sensational "insect" sound. I was also pleased with the "fish-turtle" look of the aliens and the beautiful (really beautiful, I haven't seen one of those in a long time) final explosion. I also give points to Harry Gregson-Williams, who found a nice listenable compromise between western and sci-fi music, and of course to the director, without whose sense of action (the night raid on the city, the air attack in the desert, the ending) and other (the overnight stay in the boat, the meeting with Jake's gang) scenes it wouldn't have been the same. Four pure stars. (2011-12-08)