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Cowboys and Aliens inconsistent but fun


Last summer I heard an interview with Jon Favreau, the director of both Ironman movies and Elf, among other things. He was talking about the state of the movie industry, and how he was going against the tide by not filming his latest effort, Cowboys and Aliens, in 3D.
I was pleased to hear that because I am not a fan of the genre, but more importantly I was blown away by the film title.
Cowboys and Aliens. Brilliant. A spin on the old variable, and of course, UFOs in the wild west. What’s not to love?
I can answer that now.
I like Daniel Craig, who plays the consummate tough guy cowboy alien fighter dude. He really does make Clint Eastwood look like a wuss with his over-the-top performance as the cowboy with the frozen stare. He makes Charles Bronson seem eloquent.
Our story so far. It’s a one horse town, or almost, and people are disappearing and there are these strange flying machines that seem to harvest the humans every once in awhile.
As it turns out, the aliens, who are shown early and often to decent effect, are mining gold or something. A word of praise for the aliens. They’re very fast, butt ugly, and have this extra set of arms that can come shooting out of their abdomen. Very nice. Still, I thought they did a good job making them scary and nasty.
It’s the old west.
People don’t even know what ‘lectricity’ is let alone these goober looking monsters in their spaceships.

Jake is a man with a mysterious past and a pretty funky electronic bracelet. He keeps having flashbacks a la Memento, and he clearly has been inside the aliens space ship.
Of course, there’s a girl. In one version of him forgetting where he’s been and who he is, she knocks him out with a bottle of liquor.
Best to remember the lady’s name’s Danell.
The counter punch to Jake is The Colonel, played with a weird twist by Harrison Ford. I was mostly bored by him. Apparently he’s a tough guy with a heart of gold. He has a doofus son, and an adopted sort of son who he raised as a child when he found him orphaned in Mexico.
The Colonel mostly seems like a mean-spirited jerk until we find out that he has done all these good deeds and that he’d rather walk away than fight but he will kill you dead if he has to. It’s rather cliched.
There are scenes here where it’s James Bond in the wild west.
One scene in particular where Jake’s love interest gets netted by a space ship and he jumps on his horse, races up to the highest ridge, jumps on the space ship when it goes by, punches out the alien rescues the girl and they all live happily ever after – but not really except they do have a couple of good minutes before the next bad scene with the aliens.
It was ok.
Lots of good special effects and a decent story.
There were several leaps of faith. It’s curious that these aliens could master flight, space travel and standard alien technology, but not put a peephole in their space ship so they could see that the cowboys were climbing up the front of their craft to drop dynamite into their home away from home.
There are certain inconsistencies.
Sometimes you can just shoot them once with a shot gun or stab them just once in their belly, but other times you can shoot them a bunch of times and they just smack you away.
Fair enough.
There were a lot of old west cliches, which was kind of fun. I think Favreau clearly is laughing up his sleeve.
I must have missed something because I didn’t fully understand why the aliens put this high-tech bracelet on him. Luckily that bracelet might just help them blow up the space ship and all he has to do to get it off is kiss a pretty girl.
Here’s what I think.
It’s a fun movie even if it is quite goofy.
I didn’t watch it for the first couple of weeks, but then one night got drawn in and it was fun.
I think they had the idea before they had the ending and had to come up with a way for the humans to rise up and defeat the slime dogs.
It’s fun to watch and a little corny, but at the end of the day I think it’s worth watching.
I’ll give it some perspective though. I’ve seen Captain America about six times now, and this film once. And that was enough.
As always, other opinions are welcome, but wrong. That’s it for this week. The cheque’s in the mail and I’m outta here. Paul

Filed Under: Paul Peterson

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  1. virginia Hair says:

    Cowboys and Aliens is god awful! Favreau tried to do too many things at once and ended up with a mess.
    But I like things to make sense. Silly me. ( btw for some dumb reason the alien who was experimenting on “Jake” left the bracelet very close to the table where Jake was lying.
    When he touched it accidentally, it attached itself to his arm and he could never get it off. )

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