So it’s a gimmicky title, but it sells tickets. The cardinal rule of any flimsy, hollow postmodern mantra is that if you shove two items together (any two in the world) and make them one, the product becomes immediately, immensely greater than the sum of its parts. We know this is folly, but in Favreau’s case, it works.
Indie director/Hollywood bit actor John Favreau (Iron Man, Made, Elf) has slowly become a Hollywood heavy-hitter, clocking in major hours of entertainment production in the past decade. The Iron Man films remain arguably the most watchable of the comic book hero series.
Favreau lets his actors sculpt the mood of the film, while he uses his discernment for visual effects as a way to bring his films into the mainstream. Cowboys and Aliens boasts a stacked cast, including co-star Paul Dano, who played the fire-spitting young preacher in P.T. Anderson’s There Will Be Blood.
Daniel Craig stars as outlaw amnesiac Jake Lonergan, who stumbles into an Arizona town with a mysterious bracelet clamped to his wrist. The sheriff locks him up, but before being transported out of town, alien ships light up the dirt road with fire. Lonergan discovers/remembers that his bracelet is a stolen weapon from the extraterrestrials, so he fires back with this sort of explosive laser.
During the fray, the aliens resort to gathering up townspeople with tentacle harpoons, flying them into the distance. Thus, the wealthy cattle rancher (Harrison Ford) who “owns” the town assembles a posse to track down the beastly lizard creatures. They finally join up with a fictional tribe of natives and a gang of thieves to plot out their raid on the mother ship. What follows is pretty spectacular—something between Butch Cassidy and Independence Day rather than True Grit coupled with Alien. Written by a host of screenwriting vets, Cowboys and Aliens balances that summer blockbuster thrill with a classic narrative and some stout moments of great acting.
