Cowboys & Aliens

A Candidate for Most Disappointing Film of 2011

Recalling the surprisingly good IRON MAN and it's decent sequel, I went into director Jon Favreau's COWBOYS & ALIENS expecting quite a bit. With IRON MAN, he took a plot I considered unredeemable past its title, and created one of the more entertaining films of the year. I would love to be able to deem Favreau a master of the ridiculous but, alas, this is not to be. For, with his new feature, another film with a ridiculous title / plot, another chance to make another great film, instead, with COWBOYS & ALIENS, Favreau has exhibited his immaturity as a director, an inability to direct actors, and video-game-esque action-film spectacle. The film began well enough: a weathered Daniel Craig awakening with a gunshot wound and a strange metal bracelet on his arm. Craig is a good actor, and in his early scenes has a physicality about himself that is superhuman but routed in a "Man Without A Name" Eastwood tradition of dignity. Craig's unnamed amnesiac walks into town after proving his presence on the screen, scouts the town out, gets into a few more fights, meets a beautiful girl named Ella (Olivia Wilde) and searches his pockets for clues to his identity. It turns out that Craig's character is Jake Lonergan, a crook of the old west. Jake, however, cannot remember his past, and thus acts with civility. The local sheriff (Keith Carradine), however, still considers Lonergan a hefty reward possibility, and takes him captive along with a snotty rancher boy (Paul Dano). The rancher boy's father, however, rushes into town to collect his son from the sheriff. His name is Dollarhyde and he's played here by Harrison Ford. Just as this appealing western is getting interesting though, aliens attack, rushing towards the town in dragonfly-like ships with bright lights. The aliens take many prisoners, and shoot up the town like a gang of ornery rustlers who happen to have lasers. This was the first clue that COWBOYS & ALIENS was to be anything but a great film. For, as the aliens attack, they shoot in ridiculous areas, oddly harming nobody. As a few tonally awkward scenes pass by, Lonergan eventually concedes that he should join up with Dollarhyde and the rest of the townspeople to find the aliens and rescue their kin. Favreau here attempts to imitate many better and appropriate scenes from better westerns. Like a checklist, this film has every aspect of other westerns: a boy (Noah Ringer) who learns to be a man, the awkward dandy (Sam Rockwell) who also has to become a man, the befriending of indians, sacrificial characters to further the plot, and it goes on and on. These scenes all feel forced, and Favreau is only adept at setting them up. His payoffs are often ridiculously stupid. Music swells and hats and belts rustle as everyone gets ready to battle, but when the battle comes, it's anticlimactic and badly choreographed. Favreau's too-omipresent aliens look a meld of the monster from SUPER 8 and gorilla-lobsters (as Roger Ebert described perfectly), and when they fight the townspeople, there's only two or three of them fighting at a time, while the rest take coffee breaks. Olivia Wilde is criminally underused and then deemed important and otherworldy. The alien motive is apparently to take gold from the townspeople for the simple reason that "it's just as rare for them as it is for us". (Gold isn't that rare. Also has no practical use). Olivia Wilde remarks: they're here! when the aliens are right in front of her face. The actors in Favreau's film are good because the actors behind the characters know what to do, with the exception of Olivia Wilde who is confused at how to play her character because her character in nonsensical. I could go on and on. This is essentially an immature film because it knows how to create hype for itself (the film) and even for upcoming scenes within itself, but it isn't any good at actually creating those scenes. This furthers the disappointment that the film isn't any good, and the potential the film had is also visibly squandered.

Cowboys & Aliens: ★