Cowboys and Aliens - Reviewed! (Fennecritic film review)
Jaspian the Fennecritic Presents...
A review of
Cowboys and Aliens
Its such an absurd notion - how can you not be excited about it? With a title like that, one imagines a really hokey showdown between a grizzled old sheriff and a grey alien with a raygun. One does not tend to envision a high-budget film produced by Steven Spielberg (although these days, its less of a surprise, considering the swill he’s helped create lately).
So, when I saw this movie’s trailer during the superbowl commercial-a-thon, of course I knew I would have to see it. And of course I knew it probably wouldn’t be very good. But considering the cast (good actors tend to agree to good scripts) and the producer (the name “Steven Spielberg” still evokes a sense of reverence with me, as undeserving as he is of it with his recent films, one can’t forget his past glories), and the tantalizing concept, I believed that this movie could have actually been good... perhaps even the film of the year.
But I was mistaken, and should have stuck with my gut instinct. For the most part, I enjoyed it, but it was mediocre in virtually every sense, and suffers from many technical flaws and a little bit of cheese.
So the acting is okay. Daniel Craig is (not unexpectedly) fantastic. So is most of the cast, actually. My only beef is with Harrison Ford. On the whole he was actually pretty good (especially earlier in the film), but his Han Solo ironic “What now?” look of disbelief, while being perfect for his younger more impetuous characters, doesn’t work so well for an old retired army colonel.
The special effects were passable. I didn’t “believe” a lot of the alien scenes. There was just something about the aliens themselves that didn’t make them look convincing. I’m not sure if its how they were rendered on top of the film or what, but they just seemed kinda fake. Some of the alien ship scenes weren’t so good either. There were lots of fiery explosions that were completely missing anything resembling a potential target. One would assume that a superior alien species would be able to actually hit what they’re aiming at, but apparently that’s not how it works in the Old West. There is one explosion in particular that is jaw-dropping amazing... possibly the greatest cinematic explosion of all time (its “up there” with the nuking of the Cylon BaseStar in the BattleStar Galactica Syfy series). Also the alien fighter craft were kinda cool in their odd multi-winged design, but I didn’t feel that their crashes seemed physically correct.
The pacing was a little flawed. I felt that it was good up until just before the final battle, but that the final battle’s pacing, and the “marshaling of the troops” scene were both weak. The former because it was too repetitive, and the latter because... unless cowboys have some teleportation ability I’m not aware of, it would have taken them several days to get back to that encampment, which seemed like a handful of minutes in the movie.
The cinematography is weak too. Too many closeups of action shots, and too many quick shots (action cam, but with steadycam. Shots less than 2 seconds long). This renders a lot of what should have been “good content” high and dry because it can’t be adequately appreciated. The camera shows something, and the brain doesn’t register it until the next shot is on the screen. And for battles, wide-angle or panorama are always more impressive.
Aside from the premise, the story pretty standard, leaning on the “stale” side. Really there wasn’t anything new about Cowboys and Aliens aside from the fact that its... well... Cowboys fighting aliens. They also revived one of the dead heroes in an Indian ritual... which is a horrible cheesy awful story element that should be avoided at all costs by writers because... once you can revive your heroes, not only do you get an eyeroll from your audience, but your heroes are no longer as threatened. The stakes of the conflict are lessened, and you undermine your plot.
And finally, there were a slew of technical flaws. For example, as soon as one alien dies, we hear the buzzing sound of flies. Apparently aliens generate flies instantly upon their deaths. Another is crashed ferryboat... just where did it come from, exactly? How did it get there? And why did the aliens put it there? Next, there’s the fact that the aliens wouldn’t fit in their fliers, yet seem to be piloting them (aliens come out whenever a flier crashes). The aliens are just too big. Then there’s the premise of the story. Not to give too much away, but an alien scientist is performing vivisections on humans, and they aren’t strapping the humans down. Are they idiots? Maybe I missed something, but if you don’t strap someone down while dissecting them with a laser, I don’t think one should be surprised if that someone punches you in the face and steals your magic arm laser thingie. Finally there’s the sheer impracticality of the plot. Aliens come from another planet to steal our gold... this plot actually has a lot of merit, as far as I’m concerned, since gold is (supposedly) equally rare all over the universe, and if they found a practical application for it, perhaps they would go to great lengths to acquire more of it. But they come to Earth, begin to mine the gold, and then start performing horrible experiments on the populace in order to determine how to kills us off most effectively. As a more advanced species, I would think that they would see the prudence in perhaps simply mining for the gold, or better still, trading some of their non-military technology for exclusive rights to excavate it. (Does anybody think that America circa 1900 wouldn’t give up gold by the handful for the knowledge to fabricate medicine, or grow food more effectively, or to have improved mining techniques?)
Of course they would. So why did the writers of Cowboys and Aliens choose to make the aliens this way? I suspect that the reason is actually political. Lets see... a indigenous-population-abusing foreign power comes in to claim the mineral wealth (Gold, of all things... could they not be any more obvious?) of a proportionately poor and backwards people, who put aside their differences and rally together in a diverse army to boot the invaders..? If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that’s anti-capitalist propaganda...
And so, all things considered, I have to give Cowboys and Aliens two ears drooped. Its a fairly cookie-cutter sci-fi action film despite the plot, but the myriad of flaws puts this one under. Really the only things that’re good about this film is Daniel Craig and that explosion that I mentioned earlier. If you absolutely feel that you have to see this film, I’m a little divided. The lack of wide-angle shots doesn’t preclude the fact that there are some impressive “big” shots. But I’m not sure if they are worth the money to see on the big screen. I’d have to say “no” just because the rest of the film is so mediocre.
Anyway, thanks for reading!
-jaspy