That’s the most surprising thing about the film: it’s more gritty and harsh than the daft but enticing title suggests. One scene involves a conscious woman being dissected by one of Favreau’s slimy monsters (think weaponised frog crossed with cockroach), before it incinerates her from the face down. There are also, at times, moments of horror.
This ain’t aliens versus Shane it’s aliens versus The Man With No Name and The Wild Bunch. The whole thing has a gritty, sweaty, blood-smeared look, recalling the revisionist oaters of the late ’60s onwards rather than the crisper offerings of the genre’s golden age. There is a scene in which a child is given a knife as a gift, and later uses it to stab an alien to death (er, hooray for knives!). It’s not groundbreaking, it’s not perfect, but it’s traditional and charming, and that counts for a lot. The visual effects meanwhile assist rather than burden the storytelling, adding to the atmosphere rather than sucking it out. It delivers, along the way, pleasing action sequences during which you can actually make out what’s going on - mainly because it’s not in murky, motion-blurring 3D. Directed by Jon Favreau, as much harking back to 2005’s overlooked Zathura as his Iron Man, the film puts its not-too-many human characters front and centre, offering a straightforward, linear plot, lean rather than bloated and which, while skipping over a few gaping holes, largely makes sense. Whether it finds its audience remains to be seen, but in a world where charmless robots fisting each other break box-office records, it sure deserves to. So here’s some good news: Cowboys & Aliens is no turkey in a ten gallon hat. Nope, summer 2011 seems hardly the smartest time to go West. You’d have to go back as far as Near Dark to find a satisfying and successful example. Wild Wild West (steampunk Western) failed big back in ’99 Jonah Hex (supernatural steampunk Western) died on its prosthetics-marred ass only last year.
It also comes as part of a distinctly dodgy subgenre: the weird Western.
This is neither sequel nor reboot, bravely striving for rear-ends on multiplex seats with barely any ‘brand awareness’ (ugh) and a negligible built-in audience. While based (loosely) on a comic book, Cowboys & Aliens hardly has the following Marvel-movie newcomers Thor and Captain America enjoy, and even poor old Green Lantern was a better-known title. Cowboys & Aliens is the second of two mavericks among 2011’s summer-blockbuster herd - the other being its Paramount-funded, Spielberg-produced sibling Super 8 (which, interestingly, also centres around retro-smalltown alien abduction).
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