Movies I've Seen :: Cowboys & Aliens

We watched this at home on Foxtel this evening.  It stars Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde and Harrison Ford.

Synopsis: A stranger (Craig) stumbles into the desert town of Absolution with no memory of his past and a mysterious, futuristic shackle around his wrist. With the help of mysterious beauty Ella (Wilde) and the iron-fisted Colonel Dolarhyde (Ford), he finds himself leading an unlikely posse of cowboys, outlaws and Apache warriors to fight a common enemy from beyond this world in an epic showdown for survival.

I don't think I have seen such a ridiculously simplistic story in a film for a long time!  The aliens were the bad guys and the cowboys were the good guys.  It was as straightforward and uncomplicated as that.  The cowboys got the Indians on side to help them by telling them how good they were and that if the Indians didn't help them, then the aliens would take over the world.  So, the Indian chief said "Oh, OK then".

The love interest for The Stranger was an Indian woman who turned out to be a different kind of alien, so of course she gets killed because we can't allow any inter-racial (inter-planetary?) hanky-panky. Sorry to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet!

Having said that, I have to admit that I enjoyed this film, anyway. The images of space ships flying into town and shootin' up the place was hilarious! The aliens were deliciously ugly and the hero and heroine were gorgeous. The desert battle scene was the funniest I've seen for a while, with the goblin-like aliens jumping onto the cowboys' horses, being shot with arrows by the Indians and spilling green blood. There was also, of course, the obligatory young boy with a dog and a craggy old man who reconciles with his wayward son. All the ingredients for one of the corniest Westerns ever!


I would give this film a 4 out of 10.

Yee HAH!!!