Cowboys and Aliens - Review By Mark -

Cowboys and Aliens:  The Good, the Bad and the Weird

(With apologies to Sergio Leone)

I decided to write a review of a Hollywood blockbuster that I found myself liking both drunk and sober only to find that I had been hijacked by the smurfs. Yes those annoying little blue things that should have been fed to Barney the dinosaur years ago have escaped children’s television to haunt the local multiplex. This has dominated the press coverage for the poor film that linked with Hollywood’s eternal joy in somebody else’s failure seems to obscure the fact that this is a pretty decent popcorn flick, in fact a gift.

I like the film for several reasons. I liked that it was 2D. I liked Harrison Ford as a grumpy cattle baron reminding us all he can act. I liked Daniel Craig kicking ass in the Old West. I liked imaging Oliva Wilde if this had been a Showtime miniseries with actual nudity. I should stop here.

I liked the fact that it was a Western with aliens. A real large budgeted western with a decent budget A -list stars, expensive production values and script without a smurf in sight. Just aliens from ID4 that have managed to escape an Xbox 360 somewhere to menace our heroes.  We have finally arrived at the weird west, that most difficult of subgenres and it works. This film works because it is a part of that cinematic tradition of classic tropes and big skies to watch on the silver screen instead of an iPod.

It’s also a Science Fiction film about 30% of the time, but frankly outside of Daniel Craig’s cool arm gun (what I would have given to have that when I was twelve) this science fiction Alien homage (I’ll be kind) is less interesting than the Western. This is a film that loves its heroes and the villains are simply monster who want ….gold. Harrison Ford’s line when he finds this out is priceless. Of course this would be ridiculous until you stop to consider how much the history of the Americas has been shaped by monsters who want…gold.

It’s not a history lesson or anything really deep, it just an entertainment that wants to propose that human beings are pretty much alike and pretty decent when not being crushed by the economics of a intergalactic mining consortium. Go see it, its fun.

Review By our man in the field , Mark Tygart