Cowboys and Aliens (2011) Review

When Cowboys and Aliens was first being advertised, many of my friends were planning on passing up on it because of its obviously ridiculous premise, though not quite as ridiculous as putting the Smurfs into New York. However, when you look back at Hollywood's history, you would find that a lot of the greatest cinematic breakthroughs were ultimately silly concepts. Think about it; a giant gorilla falling in love with a blonde human, a little girl prancing through Candy Land with a scarecrow, a human soup can, and a lion who could walk on two feet, and just about every comic book movie ever made. It's not about whether or not the concept itself is plausible to begin with, but rather how well that concept is handled. With 2008's Iron Man, Jon Favreau had already proven himself to be a skilled director who also liked to have fun with his work. Bring in more big names like producer Steven Spielberg and stars Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford, and you would think that this fantastically ridiculous concept would be handled well. Sadly, that is not the case.



The film starts off with the awakening of a mysterious man, played by Daniel Craig, who finds himself stranded in the middle of a desert in the old west. He goes into a town where he finds out that his name is Jake Lonergan, and that he's actually the leader of a gang wanted for murder and robbery. But before he's taken to Santa Fe to be put on trial, a group of alien warships invade the town and abduct many of the townspeople. As it turns out, Jake is the only one with a weapon strong enough to destroy these aliens in one shot, and that is a mysterious techy bracelet. Because of that, Woodrow Dolarhyde, played by Harrison Ford, decides to bring him and the rest of his deputies on an adventure to find those aliens and bring the people back.


One thing I will give the film credit for is the directorial style that these filmmakers decided to go for, supposedly in an attempt to stay on par with most big action-packed blockbusters of this generation. Everything from the lighting and shading to the performances (primarily Craig and Ford) to the costume and set design to the score to the effects done on the aliens is dark, gritty, and well-established to say the least. On top of that, the action scenes are very well-constructed, and it can be pretty fun to watch this sh** blow up. These guys definitely know how to construct a western, a sci-fi film, and an action flick. Ultimately, though, that gritty style does not tag along well with its empty plot.


The plot to the film is unbelievably underdeveloped, as are the characters. It often times brings up a lot of big questions that build up a lot of mystery, but the only answer they ever give to those questions is "It's aliens! You know the cliches!". Why are the aliens abducting the humans? Because that's what aliens do, I guess. Why are they harvesting gold? (They must be with those hideous aliens from Psychlos!) How is it that Jake lost his memory? Who is this hot chick that tries to figure out where he came from? "I don't know! Just watch Daniel Craig dressed as a cowboy blow up aliens, for God's sake!" I never read the comics, so perhaps those questions were more thoroughly answered there, but I don't feel like I should have to read the comics. See, I always believed that adaptations of comic books should deliver enough information to audiences so that even the non-readers can follow it. That's how they stretch out to other audiences to make more of a profit. Cowboys and Aliens does not do that, and I wouldn't mind it so much if they didn't want us to take the film seriously and just wanted to make a fun popcorn flick, but they don't even do that!


These filmmakers were trying way too hard to take the premise of cowboys fighting off aliens too seriously, and yet weren't trying hard enough, if that makes any sense. See, I don't think that the idea of cowboys versus aliens is that surreal of a concept. It is possible that aliens could have been invading Earth during the revolution (or something along those lines). If given a clever enough script, this premise could be pulled off seamlessly. Yet, it seems like the filmmakers felt that such a concept was pretty silly and did nothing more than place aliens in a desert and have cowboys fight them off. If that's all they wanted to do, then the film needed a goofier tone, but instead, they went with this dark and gritty style that tells us that they want us to take the film seriously. If you want us to have fun with a film, then make it fun as opposed to gritty and dramatic! If you want us to take the film seriously, you'll need a lot more conflict and complexity to make the film deep and inspiring. The mixture of a gritty tone with dumb action without conflict is ultimately a sour and boring mix.


Cowboys and Aliens means well and has a lot of fantastic talent behind it. It's well-constructed and can be entertaining with some of its performances and action scenes. Regardless of all that, however, it doesn't hold up. The gritty style does not match up with its ridiculous premise or its underdeveloped plot. The characters are one-dimensional, the plot raises one too many questions, and it has a pretentious tendency to throw in the biggest cliches without any cleverness. The filmmakers behind this film had no interest in doing anything other than dressing up Daniel Craig as a cowboy and having him shoot down aliens. If that's your cup of tea, perhaps you'll enjoy this film, but I'm warning you now that that's literally all you're going to get.