SIP Movie Review Blog

Just saw a much advertised movie that was good, not great.  Cowboys and Aliens stars Daniel Craig (Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace), Harrison Ford  (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars), Buck Taylor (old timey cowboy from Gunsmoke, Wild Wild West), Olivia Wilde (Tron:Legacy, Next Three Days), Sam Rockwell (Green Mile, Iron Man 2), Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine, There Will Be Blood), Keith Carradine (Southern Comfort, Long Riders).  This was a star stacked movie, just didn’t open up any new doors.

Premise is Craig wakes up in the Arizona territory, no memory of who he is, how he got there, no boots, and a strange shackle on his left wrist.  He has a run-in with some tough hombres, takes them out just as Bond would, and heads into the town of Absolution.   It is run by Woodrow Dolarhyde, played well by Harrison Ford.  He growls his way through most of the movie.  His son Percy, played by Paul Dano gets into trouble by shooting a deputy by accident.  Turns out Craig is a wanted man, the sheriff (Keith Carradine) has a poster on him, puts him in the jail.   Soon Percy and Craig are on the same stage coach headed to the next territory for trial.  Ford comes in, says to let his son go, the sheriff played by Carradine says he can’t.  It is about to get ugly, when a space ship appears and begins to lasso up the town people, taking them up into the sky never to be seen again.  Craig and Percy break out of the stagecoach, and Craig figures out the arm band is a weapon, and it will knock down the space ship, in fact, the only weapon that is effective against the spaceships.  So three have left already, he shoots the last one down.  They approach, find it empty, but there is a battle going on in the house next to the downed ship, a man is killed violently, and the creature gets away, leaving a trail of three toed prints and green blood.    

Olivia Wilde seeks Craig out, tells him she wants to help him find the aliens.  They actually don’t call them aliens, in fact, they call them demons.  This was before we knew about aliens, so demons seemed to be the best idea.  The townspeople decide to head out the next morning to track the “demon”.  They lose the trail due to rain and hole up in a wrecked paddle boat, upside down in the middle of the desert.  Anyone thinking weird here?  We have a boy and a dog who is investigating the boat, when the dog goes nuts, barking at something we cannot see, but feel like it ain’t good.  The dog goes quiet; the boy sees the first clear view of the alien, about 7 feet tall, like a skinny green hulk.  They move really fast.  The boy hides, thinks the alien is gone, he re-appears, his chest opens and we see another little being inside, reaches out his arms to touch the kid.  Gunfire chases him away, it is pretty creepy stuff. 

So now Craig and Ford have a mission, to try and rescue loved ones who have been taken by these green men.  They continue the tracking; end up making friends with a group of Indians, and finding Craig’s old outlaw gang as well.  Turns out our boy Daniel had a past, and the boys are not happy with how he left them.  They feel like he took a ton of gold, and left them behind.  More on that later.  They find the aliens; Olivia has a real important part in the latter part of the movie.  These aliens are looking for gold, and these are scouts.  If they get what they want, the rest of their race will come down and wipe us out.  So it is important to stop them at all costs. 

So we did not break any new ground here, in fact, other than the story being placed in Arizona in the 1800s, it is pretty much the same old alien story.  Kind of like Super 8 150 years ago, with adults instead of kids.  The aliens move really fast, have some more of those bracelets, which cause flashes of light and then no more target.  They also have a monster space ship, and are mining the gold right out of the town.  Spoiler alert: they have kept alive the people they lassoed, doing some sort of experiments to see how tough we are.  So that is even more reason for Ford and Craig to get busy.  

We didn’t see the chemistry that we expected from the two leading men, we got more from the son, sheriff and Olivia.  And the putting together the team of Indians, bandits and assorted townspeople was a stretch.  At any rate, it was a good afternoon spent in August, so not academy award stuff, but good summer fare.  We’ll go with 3.5 warp speeds.  Mostly because of Craig and Ford being involved, it was a treat to see them on the screen together.