‘Cowboys & Aliens’ Movie Review: Some films try too hard
to be too much; this is one of those films. Sometimes two different genres are
just not meant to mix, science fiction and Weston. The first half an hour of
this film is the best bit, when a man (Daniel Craig) wakes up in the middle of the desert with only a
picture of a woman, a strange iron shackle on his wrist and the clothes on his
back, he also has no memory of anything that came before in his life, he then
gets in a to a fight with a few men and makes his way to the small mining town,
Absolution. From there it has a few
of the old Weston clichés which are still fun to watch but soon enough it is
found out Jake Lonergan who has committed murder and robbery. Just as he is
about to be whipped away to jail, aliens come and blow up the town. From here
on out the characters you have been introduced to will not develop in any way.
There I have said it, my main annoyance
with the film; the characters do not interest me at all. The over used story of
the man who has forgotten everything and has to work to get it back, the mysterious
girl (Ella Swenson played by Olivia Wilde) who seems to know more than anyone
else and the grumpy leader who will not trust anyone (Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde
played by Harrison Ford). The acting is great but the actors are not given
anything emotional to do with their roles. But the story of the aliens is not
explained at all either. Sometimes they will be able to be stabbed, other times
they cannot, sometimes they can be killed with a gun, and other times they
cannot. The ending did not make any sense at all and Swenson was ever explained!
Don’t get me wrong I love a good ambiguous ending (I adore Inception) but this
really took it too far.
The most amazing thing about the film
though was the awesome CGI on the aliens; they looked very realistic and scary.
The Weston setting was entertaining, with authentic costumes, props and
shocking scenery. There were a few jump scares but other than that I never felt
any emotion during the film due mainly to poor scripting. I was never rooting
for the characters or laughing at the cowboy banter. 4 out of 10.
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