COWBOYS VRS. ALIENS

“COWBOYS VRS. ALIENS” (Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde & Sam Rockwell)

When my friend Chris first told me about this film we both thought it was an internet joke. So when the joke became reality, it just made sense that we should wait until it came to the discount cinema and see ‘Cowboys Vrs. Aliens’ together.
It was worth the $3 admission basically due to Olivia Wilde’s engaging eyes – though Chris thought her rising from the ashes ala the Phoenix was ridiculous, I welcomed her back because I knew the film would suck without her to gaze upon.
But Chris and I agreed on everything else in this film – the beginning half was quite good, entertaining and humorous with an interesting concept – while the second half sunk to what we expected a film called Cowboys Vrs. Aliens to be – junk.
What worked was Daniel Craig’s Jake Lonegan. The film begins with Jake waking in the desert with a wound in his side and an odd metallic device clamped to his right wrist. Despite his efforts to break it off, the device remained attached.
Jake has no memory of who he is or where he was so he aimlessly wanders into the nearest town where he meets Paul Dano’s Percy, the son of the richest land baron in these here parts. Percy is drunk and shooting his gun off in the middle of the street when Jake makes a smart alec remark that Percy takes offense to. Percy winds up wounding a deputy and being kneed in the crotch by Jake before being carted off to jail – constantly claiming, “Wait until my daddy finds out about this!”
Jake soon joins Percy when the sheriff (Keith Carradine) finds a wanted for murder poster in his office.
Daddy (Harrison Ford in one of his ‘I just have to show up and read my lines’ moods)
shows up shortly before the aliens enter the picture. With Jake and Percy ensconced inside a prisoner transference wagon, Daddy demands that the sheriff release his son when the weird lights in the sky appear and begin shooting blasts of light that explode upon impact. As the blasts near the paddy wagon, Jake yells at Percy, “give me your hand!” A very frightened Percy whimpers, “I don’t want to die!” Jake replies, “You won’t if you give me your hand – I know how to get us out of here.”
Once Percy surrenders his hand, Jake proceeds to break every bone in it so he can slip the shackles over Percy’s wrist and thus make his escape.
So, yes, things were going along well at that point – I liked the mystery of ‘Jake’ and the object on his wrist and the humor of Jake constantly pummeling the spoiled rich kid.
But then came the frog-people...
Sam Rockwell played ‘Doc’ though he seemed to be the saloon owner and the local preacher was the one that tended to Jake’s wound. Doc joins the search party that forms after the aliens’ initial attack as his wife was one of the several townspeople that were abducted during the melee.
Jake discovers he was the leader of a gang of outlaws and they, along with a band of renegade Indians join the posse in search of the aliens that they are told by the beautiful Ella (Olivia Wilde) will wipe out all civilization in order to mine all of the earth’s gold.
The movie then descends into the silly cowboys versus aliens motif where it seems that dozens of cowboys and Indians are killed in battle, yet when the dust clears – all the cowboys and Indians seem to be accounted for.
The device on Jake's wrist is a weapon that gives the cowboys an upper hand - but it is one of the alien's weapons - How come they don't have the same thing to fire back at the cowboys and Indians? And how is it that cowboys on horseback can catch up to aliens in spaceships?
What disturbed me most was the ending which lent itself to set up a possible sequel or two – Coming next year “Cowboys Vrs. Aliens 2: The Wrath of The Frog-People”
followed by the Daniel Craig-directed, “Cowboys Vrs. Aliens 3: The Search For Ella”
and then, of course, the Back To The Past time travelling sequel, “C V A 4 : The Voyage Home (To The Old West)” where the cowboys are transported into the future to find a pair of humpback whales that they can bring back to their time to ease the Frog-people who now want blubber instead of gold. You laugh now, but stranger things have happened in Hollywood and you know it...