Disappointing?…of course it was. What else would it be.
Jon Favreau was in over his head. No clear idea presented in the movie. Was it a western? Was it a gunfighter. Was it a comedy? Was it sci-fi? Was it an action flick or love story?
Confused it was.
I give it credit for breaking some new ground but that’s it.
Ohh and Harrison Ford almost looked credible in moments. wow!! I thought he was dead.
“Cowboys & Aliens”, we all remember that childhood game right? We’d scrounge around searching for sticks that were shaped like pistols, Tommy guns, death rays or anal probes, we’d start hooting and hollering and high -pitched shrieking as foreshadowing Monty Python and run around the neighborhood pretending to be on our horses or biometrically controlled space craft. There were mock shoot outs, scalping and autopsies played out so real you’d swear you can hear the Calvary or the mothership riding over the hill in the distance.
These memories tumbled past my mind’s eye like that specific weed as I sat in the theater gazing longingly at the flicking screen wanting to relive those magical days. In many moments I did. In many more moments, I did not. Favreau (aka Money who turned big time director) directed a true blue western and did not hesitate to pull out all the tropes.. nor homages: the man with no eyes, riding into the sunset, the lone gunman, curmudgeon gunslinger who finds his heart, lasers, aliens harvesting and experimenting upon humanity, gold digging, horseback riding in beautiful settings, dynamite, stolen loot, etc., etc., ya hear! I watched Daniel Craig do this best Eastwood/McQueen/Wayne impersonation and Harrison Ford doing his best John Wayne.. the only one he could do. Then I watched both mimic the scene from Indiana Jones where they escape the rolling ball and the “old man” as Craig announced Harrison gets out clean and unscathed but Craig is nearly killed and covered with grit..true grit at that.
The pacing was off for a true western, something that unsettled me from the onset, but it was a true western. Slow it down a bit and I could be mistaken for walking into Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, or The Searchers, or Pale Rider, or Unforgiven, or any other western.. but instead of jumping off horses onto stage coaches, they jumped onto alien spaceships. Instead of hot pursuit of dirty, kidnapping Indians, they pursuing dirty, kidnapping aliens. And for a little while this was OK. The aliens were not in your face, the special effects were subtle.. if you can call beast with beast and melting gold and high tech probing subtle .. and they were executed in broad daylight, which I always like. Sure, Transformers made a big slash with their director not hiding their CGI limitations under the cover of night, but it was good to see the action take place under the desert sun and have the crippled aircraft crash and explode on the near side of the mountain, not around back.
It was simply cowboys (and Indians) fighting aliens. I walked out of the theater happy with seeing it. No need to ever see it again, noting stellar in the performances or story, but a nice little western with aliens. And then this morning, thinking about the kitschy title and so subtle dealings with the aliens, I then realized it would have been the same move if it was just cowboys and indians. The alien creatures were so subtly done, their treatment so lazzaie faire, that they could have very easily been just a rival clan of indians, or hello a rouge gang of cowboys in black. The aliens were downplayed too much.
So there you have it, a western that could not stand on its own without the aliens, yet the aliens, like Naomi Watts in all her films, could have been played by anyone else… or anything else in this case.
What’s in a name eh?