Review - Cowboys and Aliens

Cowboys & Aliens is Jon Farveau’s latest comic book adaptation and sadly for Farveau probably his worst. Having only briefly glanced at the comic, the film seems very different and based on the results I can only say it is poorer for it and the genre mash-up seems to miss almost everything cool they could’ve done with this story.

A very simple and quick plot breakdown - A spaceship arrives in Arizona, 1873, to take over the Earth, starting with the Wild West region. A posse of cowboys and natives are all that stand in their way... Before that happens though we are introduced to a stranger (Daniel Craig) who can’t remember anything turns up in the town of Absolution and surprise, surprise Aliens show up soon after...

That’s pretty much it in terms of a plot crunch and to be honest that is all you’ll need to know.

Now to the film...

The locations look great and are used well by Farveau, although it could all be green screen – I can’t tell these days.

Daniel Craig pouts his way through the film, laying on a pretty good wild west accent, whilst Harrison Ford actually seems interested in this film (God knows why) but he puts in a solid effort. Olivia Wilde is along for the ride but for someone who is so strikingly beautiful it is a shame she isn’t used in a better way.

The CGI is pretty good quality and the Aliens look nasty enough and the explosions and gun fights are of a good standard.

However once again the CGI cannot mask an average script, written by 86 people (well 5) but it really shows, with the film not flowing all that well. There are some scenes which should’ve evoked some emotion, it all seemed fairly ho-hum, the thrilling scenes had no underlying thrill, it seemed as though the conclusion was a formality that the film took forever to arrive at.

Another little issue I had was the killing of the aliens, sometimes a shot from a six shooter was enough, other times it took several shots to bring them down, despite being shot in the head on both occasions.

All up a pretty disappointing film, despite the great ideas and it falls very flat.