Cowboys & Aliens

There are many words that could properly describe this movie but the best of the bunch would have to be, disappointing. This is one of those movies that the premise alone gets you excited for the movie. The trailers were intriguing but mostly underwhelming, the only thing that really salvaged my hopes initially was the fact that Daniel Craig was involved in the movie and I can't really remember a time where he did not give a good performance. Having Olivia Wilde in the movie also did not hurt considering she is maybe the hottest woman on the face of the Earth. Harrison Ford really hams it up in the movie and really adds nothing to the movie at all. Sam Rock well tries his best but his character is underwritten and the other characters in the movie are mostly filler and set up to die in the movie.This movie ended up being a huge financial disappointment but is a decent movie overall that takes itself way too seriously.

The movie's plot concerns itself with Jake(Daniel Craig), who has amnesia and remembers nothing of his past. Jake also has a strange device attached to his wrist that is alien in nature. He wanders into the local town and his wounds are treated by the local preacher. Jake also comes into conflict with the family the controls most of the town's activities that is led by Woodrow Dolarhyde(Harrison Ford). Ella(Olivia Wilde) is the mysterious woman in town who has an instant connection with Jake. The first night of him being in town, aliens begin abducting the townspeople and the device activates on Jake's wrist revealing itself to be a weapon. This leads to an adventure to discover his past and also save all of those that were abducted by the aliens.

Daniel Craig and Olivia Wilde provide two good performances while the rest of the cast mostly phones it in for most of the movie. Everything else in the movie is really mediocre, the story is really not that engaging at all because it takes itself way too seriously for such an over the top concept. Harrison Ford gives one of his worst performances, basically this was just a paycheck for him and you can really tell. The direction in the movie is all over the place because at times it wants to be a pure western and then at other times it wants to be a science fiction action movie. There is never a happy median between the two and you can tell that no one knew what type of movie they were actually trying to make. Sub-par special effects do not really help the movie at all with the aliens looking fake in every scene that they are in, there were not practical effects used to make the aliens and that really took away from the impact of seeing the creatures for the first time.

This was one of the most disappointing movies of 2011 and if you were pumped by watching the trailers then this movie will definitely let you down. That is a real shame because this movie really did have a lot of potential. With a little more humor and some better casting decisions this would have been one of the most surprising movies of the summer. This movie gets a 5/10 and that is really only because of the excellent performances from Daniel Craig and Olivia Wilde.