The title of this movie promised the perfect marriage between John Wayne and his six shooter and Will Smith and his deatomizer. I thought this movie was going to give the king of the summer a run for his money.
However the combined acting chops of an aging Harrison Ford and a smoldering Daniel Craig couldn't keep this western from dying of thirst.
The opening sequence was fantastic. A lone man awakes in the desert with the sun beating down on his face. A posse of scalpers surrounds him and threatens to take him to town for a reward. The audience scoots the edge of their seats waiting to see how the man handles himself. And before our grubby hands can get to the bottom of the popcorn button the man has killed all three scalpers, stripped the shoes off one and ran off with their hunting dog.
Wow, we were sucked right in. Well I know I was. I mean how can you go wrong with a sun bathed Daniel Craig?
Well I will tell you how wrong it can go.
YOU HAVE NO STORY!
The premis of this movie is that alien gold hunters land on Earth and start killing people just to find out the best way to kill us? So wait you are telling me these aliens that can suck liquid gold from the very bowels of Earth and vaporize people with the flashy light thing can't figure out how to kill us without killing us first?
Forgive me if I have a little trouble suspending disbelief right now.
And don't get me started on the unnecessary casting of House's 13 in this movie. I mean what would a Western be without the saloon girl turned "gun slinger" Except this chick didn't even sling a gun. She fainted, she ran, she died, and then turned out to be another alien.
Cowboy and Aliens couldn't figure out just how to give the aliens a plausible reason for being on earth. They couldn't go with a take over plot. Independence Day already did that. They couldn't go with the alien refugee camp, Men in Black took care of that....So wait, two of the best alien movies in the recent cinema history starred Will Smith. So maybe Jon Favreau should have cast Will instead of Olivia Wilde.
The mini story plots simmering under the surface didn't add anything to the movie. They were mere distractions that weren't even that distracting they were so bland. The boy looking for his courage. The father finally seeing his son. The son learning responsibility. The husband finally appreciating his wife. It was all as dry as a English muffin straight from Sonya Morgan's toaster oven.
I was sorely disappointed in this movie.
I give it 2 1/2 stars only because of Craig and Ford.
