★★½Starring Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Adam Beach, Clancy Brown, Keith Carradine, Paul Dano and Walton Goggins.
Directed by Jon Favreau.
The first fifteen minutes or so work really well. It's a real Western. Daniel Craig is a cowboy who wakes up with amnesia. He goes to the nearest town where he gets recognized as a thief. He fights back, but he gets jailed. The townsfolk gather when the chief cattle baron of the region (Harrison Ford) shows up to spring his own wayward son out of prison.
And then the aliens show up, kidnapping about half of the people we meet. Somewhere in there the fun factor should kick in, but the movie plays it straight the entire time.
So as an alien movie, the aliens don't seem that threatening, which is to say, despite their technology, the aliens are poor tacticians and shockingly easy to kill. Their design isn't that creative, straight out of the gray-skinned, many-limbed playbook. They actually reminded me a lot of the creature from Super 8.
Now I've read the source material. It was a comic-book written with the intent of being made into a movie. Its story wasn't great either. In fact Favreau's really fleshed it out. I just don't see a reason why no one seemed to realize they were making a summer movie called Cowboys & Aliens. Let's have a blast, why don't we.
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