Cowboys and Aliens

Rating: 3.5 Shurikens

This week, I saw Cowboys and Aliens, a Sci-Fi Western movie, or was it a Western Sci-Fi movie? Well, it was a Sci-Fi picture set in the American West of the later part of the 19th Century. It had all the flavor of a classic Western, with outlaws, gunslingers, cowboys, Indians, whiskey and horses. It was also a pretty good science fiction story about aliens from another planet plotting to take over the world, with scary-looking aliens, not as scary as the aliens in Alliens, and ray gun weapons. It actually does a pretty good job of melding the two genres, but it has to stretch just a little to give the Earthlings a fighting chance to win.

The story begins with Roger Craig playing an outlaw who wakes up in the desert with a strange bracelet on his wrist, but no memory of who he is. Craig is the latest actor to play James Bond, and was very good in Casino Royale, which was arguably the most exciting James Bond movie to date. Anyway, he is the notorious outlaw Jake Lonergan, wanted in a stage coach robbery. He is desperately searching for his lost love. He is greeted by a group of seedy individuals who want to claim a reward, but he makes short work taking them out, and heads to the town of Absolution.

Absolution is a cow town, dominated by a particular cattle baron named Woodrow Dolarhyde, played by Harrison Ford, of Star Wars and Indiana Jones fame, among many other great films such as Blade Runner. Lonergan gets into a scuffle with Dolarhyde's son, and is arrested by Sheriff John Taggart, played by Keith Carradine, and ends up in jail, to be transported to the state capital to be tried for his crimes. Just as soon as he is loaded into the wagon, a beautiful girl tries to find out what he knows. Ella Swenson, played by Olivia Wilde, seems like she knows something about Jake's amnesia, and the disappearances of many townsfolk of late.

That is when the aliens come in. Some flying craft come and take several people from town, includinbg Dolarhyde's son, and fly away. Jake figures out that his bracelet is a weapon, and uses it to shoot down one of the craft, and then they pursue a wounded alien into the night. Jake takes off immediately, and the rest wait until morning, and soon a posse off sorts is formed with the Sheriff, Dolarhyde, Ella, the town minister, and the bar owner named Doc, who is played by Sam Rockwell. Rockwell was Justin Hammer in Iron Man II nad also played Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There is also a kid and a dog.

The movie moves along haltingly at times, with some attempts at humor, and quite a bit of melodrama, and there is a very large amount of death amongst the humans before everything is said and done. Quite a bit of the story relies on some very incredible happenstance, which has to be explained in flashback to make the story complete. It is not the best movie of the Summer, and for many, it will be fine to wait for when it comes out on disc. Still, it had some good action and character interaction, and earns a rating of 3.5 Shurikens, for a pretty entertaining story and some nice action.