Capone is on board for COWBOYS & ALIENS genre-bending ride!!!

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

I've never opened a review like this, but for some reason I feel compelled to do so for director Jon Favreau's latest action opus. Somewhere around the halfway mark of COWBOYS & ALIENS, the gun-slinging female lead Ella (Olivia Wilde, maximizing her exotic beauty by minimizing the glam qualities of her hair, makeup, and costume) is literally lassoed off her horse by a flying alien. Riding next to her is Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig), aka The Man with No Past (at least temporarily), who immediately sets out to rescue her by chasing down the low-flying alien craft and leaping from his horse onto the top of said ship. After much struggle and attempts by the craft to shake its unwanted passenger, the ship crashes in the desert and Ella and Jake go tumbling across the sand, bruised and battered, but still alive.

Rather than immediately run for cover or seek out the other members of their team, Jake takes a moment, smiles at Ella, and says something like, "We were flying." It's one of the most honest and believable reactions in a film that asks us to set aside our constant desire to separate genres and be open to the magic that can happen when worlds collide. That moment in COWBOYS & ALIENS asks us to remember that, aside from the occasional hot air balloon ride, Jake and Ella just became the first human beings to take flight at such speeds and lived to tell the tale. And this is a film that does an impressive and thrilling job at trying to gauge what the reaction would be in 1873 to an alien abduction/attack scenario.

Walking into seeing COWBOYS & ALIENS, I was prepared to become annoyed at how quickly these Old West characters got used to the presence of aliens (a word I'm pretty certain is never used in the film) in their lives, but thankfully that never happened. Depending on what culture or belief system a character possessed, each one of them sees the invaders in a different light. The more religiously inclined see them as demons; Native American characters see them as monsters; still others see them as nothing more than high-tech kidnappers. The idea that they might be creatures from another world doesn't really sink in until we're deep in the film. And this is exactly how it should be. And like any good Americans, the response to these things we don't understand or recognize is to kill them. Thankfully, screenwriters Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby make the aliens so hateful that wiping them out seems okay.

But here's the biggest secret about COWBOYS & ALIENS: it's actually a really great Western that is in many ways sidetracked by the alien elements. Don't get me wrong, the alien stuff is fun, but this tale of a man with memory loss wandering into a small town and butting heads with local law enforcement and cattle mogul Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford in full-on gruff mode) is actually compelling enough to sustain it's own film. Actually, much of the first 30 minutes of the film plays out with Craig saying almost nothing, making him all the more intriguing. His mystery past deepens due to him wearing a massive metal device on his left forearm--too big to be handcuffs but big enough that he can't exactly hide it. As I'm sure you know, the device comes to life as a type of weapon in the presence of aliens and seems to be the only thing that can take down one of the alien ships, making Jake a valuable commodity. After the aliens first make their presence known by attacking the town and scooping up about half its residents, a good old-fashioned posse is formed to go find "our kin."

COWBOYS & ALIENS has great lead actors in Craig, Ford, and Wilde, but its heart and soul belongs to the supporting players, all of whom give us a sense of what's important to folks at this time in history. There are a couple of conversations between a preacher (Clancy Brown) and the town saloon owner, Doc (Sam Rockwell), about the importance of faith that provide an undercurrent of strength and motivation to the entire film. As always, Keith Carradine is on hand as the town Sheriff to provide a real sense of gravity and perspective to the situation. He tries to be a good agent of the law, but he also knows that his town is bought and paid for by Dolarhyde. One of my favorite characters is Nat (Adam Beach), Dolarhyde's Native American sidekick, who seems like more of son to the old man than his actual, reprehensible son Percy (Paul Dano). Cowboys & Aliens gets bonus coolness points for having Walton Goggins in its midst as an old acquaintance of Jake, from a time when his memory was a bit sharper.

Weirdly enough, I had a similar reaction to the alien presence in this film as I did to those in another Steven Spielberg production, SUPER 8. In both films, the alien creations are interesting but they certainly don't add anything new to the history of creature design or science fiction storytelling. What far more interesting is what's going on when the aliens aren't around. In SUPER 8, I was transfixed and quite moved by the tale of these young filmmakers. In COWBOYS & ALIENS, the mystery of Jake Lonergan's past in this Western setting had me hooked from the first frame. And make no mistake, watching Craig and Ford try to out badass each other is one of the purest forms of joy I've had all summer. I also appreciated that Wilde's character is not established as simply a love interest for Craig--far from it. Ella has a very specific purpose in this story, and while some of you may laugh when you find out what it is, I found it to be one of the film's truly pleasant surprises.

I don't think I'm ruining anything saying that COWBOYS & ALIENS all comes down to a nasty battle outside the alien HQ, hidden in the desert. I found this final battle especially thrilling because of how damn bright it was. I'm so used to sci-fi featuring aliens to shroud their creations in darkness that I was thrilled with all that sunlight. Favreau wants us to see how ugly and nasty these creatures are. The battle has a strangely naturalistic quality to it, as Favreau channels a bit of Anthony Mann's Westerns to make us really feel that these different species are hashing it out in the dust. Hell, the aliens even have green blood; you can't beat that.

Did I find it a bit strange when I found out why the aliens are on earth in the first place? A bit, yes. But that goes to my point about the alien storyline not being all that important to this movie. Despite its title, COWBOYS & ALIENS is a Western that just happens to have some aliens thrown in. Even Favreau seems more interested in developing his human characters than having them tangle with these grotesque creatures. I still found the alien sequences exciting and wildly entertaining; they just pale in comparison to what's going on when the posse of townsfolk meet up with a local Native tribe or Jake's old crew of degenerates. Do I think COWBOYS & ALIENS will spark a new wave of Westerns? Not really, but I'll take this beautifully shot film as a stand-alone work until the next brave director decides he/she wants to strap on a pair of chaps, hop on a horse, and ride on into the sunset.

-- Capone
capone@aintitcool.com
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