Cowboys & Aliens asks an intriguing question: how would the gunfighters and settlers of the Old West, with their primitive weapons and philosophies, fare against advanced invaders from another world?
Based on Scott Mitchell Rosenberg's 2006 graphic novel, Cowboys opens on a stranger (Daniel Craig) as he awakens in the Arizona desert circa 1873 with a nasty gut wound and a strange metal contraption around his wrist. He's barely able to soak in his predicament before three unsavory types arrive on horseback, mistake his new bracelet as a wrist-iron and assume he's of value to the law. Faster than Billy the Kid on his best day, the stranger dispenses of the men, pilfers their weapons and clothes and heads for a nearby town on the horizon.
That town is a small mining hamlet called Absolution and it doesn't take long for the stranger to publicly humiliate a smarmy brat named Percy Dolarhyde (Paul Dano) and catch the attention of Sheriff John Taggart (Keith Carradine). Taggart recognizes the stranger as one Jake Lonergan, a notorious killer and bandit, and promptly locks him up, with the help of local woman Ella Swenson (Olivia Wilde), to await transfer to the federal marshal. Lonergan can't remember a thing about his past, including how he came about his fancy new hardware.
Word of Lonergan's capture gets back to Percy's father, Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), a powerful rancher and Civil War veteran, who supposedly had a cache of gold swiped by Lonergan and his gang sometime back. As Dolarhyde and his men ride into town to procure Lonergan from the law, strange lights descend from the night sky and begin snatching up people, including Taggart and Dolarhyde's son, while laying waste to everything in their path. It's about this time that Lonergan's bracelet begins to light up and soon he's blown a hole through his cell and using the device to bring down a huge, insect-looking ship flying overhead.
As the invaders flee, it becomes obvious to Dolarhyde and the remaining citizens of Absolution that they're going need Lonergan and his special weapon if they're ever going to see their abducted loved ones again. All Lonergan cares about, however, is finding out about his past.
It's surprising with all the talent behind the camera - director John Favreau, producers Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg - how pedestrian and uninspiring Cowboys & Aliens is. Fantastical elements aside, you've seen this movie and its characters a hundred times before. The script is standard and predictable, quickly replacing its brief bits of humor with one dull exchange after another. And when the aliens finally reveal themselves, they look like rejects from Cloverfield, Super 8 and every other alien-invasion flick of the last five years.
Craig is compelling as an Old West gunslinger, providing a quiet, untapped menace that would be fun to explore in a more original endeavor; Ford delivers his lines in his now-trademark growl and seems to be finding his character as if at a table-read instead of in front of the camera.
The premise asks an intriguing question indeed. Unfortunately, the answer Cowboys & Aliens provides is neither fresh nor of consequence to either genre.
