Cowboys & Aliens

The film is directed by Jon Favrea (Elf and Iron Man) and focuses on a strange man, played by Daniel Craig (The Golden Compass and Quantum of Solace), who awakens in the desert with no memory of who he is or where he came from.  Furthermore, attached to his wrist is a strange device that clearly exceeds the level of technology in 1873.  He wanders into an old mining town that looks straight out of one of the old spaghetti westerns from the 60s and 70s, where he quickly finds himself at odds with the local townsfolk.  In fact, not long after his arrival, he manages to get into an altercation with Percy Dolarhyde, played by Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine and There Will be Blood), the son of Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde, played by Harrison Ford (Star Wars and Indiana Jones), a wealthy and powerful cattleman.  After hearing that his son has been arrested in town for the incident, he rides in to throw his weight around and finds both his son and Craig’s character in a stagecoach preparing to be shipped off to the U.S. Marshals.  Craig is apparently wanted for armed robbery and murder, but this will prove to be the least of his problems.

Not long after, strange lights appear in the night sky and reveal themselves to be alien space crafts; of course the town’s folks have no concept of this and so the notion of demons is offered as a possible identity for the strange assailants.  The crafts begin lassoing people up and taking them away; one of them is Dolarhyde’s son.  Craig’s character manages to shoot one of the ships down with the strange device on his wrist, which apparently is some sort of weapon.  Moments later, the alien that had been shot down makes his presence known by killing a couple in one of the nearby houses.  Wounded, the creature takes off into the night and Dolarhyde rallies everyone to go out after it.  What ensues is a blend of Wild West cowboy action and textbook science fiction; two rather strange bedfellows, but ones that surprisingly work well together in this film.

The films worked very well on pretty much all levels, short of a only a few here and there.  The acting is fantastic and all the principle characters hold the audiences' interest.  Furthermore, you actually feel bad for them and want to see them triumph over the aliens who are nothing to take lightly.  Still, unfortunately I found them to be the least interesting thing about this movie.  Granted they were a step up from the ultra bland and emotionless aliens from Battle: Los Angeles, but they were still too generic looking and acting for me in the end.  Yes, they were big, and yes, they were strong, buy they seemed to lack imagination.  Only in one scene do we really see one with an actual personality.  Still, I suppose that's better then B.L.A. where they had none to speak of.  Just once I would like to see aliens with actual personalities and as legitimate characters as opposed to being just movie monsters.  That, and I wish they would actually make them look cool.  Something about their design just struck me as generic.