COWBOYS & ALIENS

Cowboys & Aliens stars Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde and Sam Rockwell. Directed by Jon Favreau. Rated PG-13 with a running time of 1 hour and 58 minutes.

Plot: 1873. Arizona Territory. A stranger (Craig) with no memory of his past stumbles into the hard desert town of Absolution. The only hint to his history is a mysterious shackle that encircles one wrist. What he discovers is that the people of Absolution don't welcome strangers, and nobody makes a move on its streets unless ordered to do so by the iron-fisted Colonel Dolarhyde (Ford). It's a town that lives in fear. But Absolution is about to experience fear it can scarcely comprehend as the desolate city is attacked by marauders from the sky. Screaming down with breathtaking velocity and blinding lights to abduct the helpless one by one, these monsters challenge everything the residents have ever known.

Cowboys & Aliens is certainly an intriguing idea and I do believe that the filmmakers tried their best to make a good movie but sadly a good movie this is not. It's definitely one of the biggest disappointments of the summer, right up there with Green Lantern. There's definitely a great cast here with Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford but it's just the story that is dull and boring. It starts off with the typical western movie cliches, a stranger comes to a new town and clashes with the locals. Then the aliens arrive and abduct some of the townspeople and the rest of the movie deals with the rescue of those people.

I found the story to be very unoriginal and quite lazy. Which is disappointing with all the talented people working on the film. The action scenes were loud and boring and simply not special. The aliens were also unoriginal since they are variations of all the other aliens we have seen in countless movies. I also think that Cowboys & Aliens was hurt by being another alien movie in a summer filled with them. Earlier this year we had Battle LA, Super 8 and Green Lantern, and they all had enough aliens for moviegoers this year. Cowboys & Aliens was simply just another alien invasion movie but added nothing new to the genre except, obviously, the setting.

Favreau fans will definitely hate me for saying this but I still don't think he is a very good action director. Yes I know he directed the 2 Iron Man movies but to me they didn't have very special action climaxes. They weren't bad but I just don't think they were very good either. I found this to be the case with Cowboys & Aliens too. The movie was an intriguing idea but the story was very average and it just ended up being another alien invasion movie, and not a very good or interesting one. I don't think we will be seeing anymore cowboy and alien movies anytime soon.

C+