Trailers I am absolutely sick of: ‘Mission Impossible 14’ - Tom Cruise still thinks he’s young, and the only reason I don’t vomit when I see this trailer is because the music is actually pretty exciting.
‘The Debt’ - With all this star power, how come you are relentlessly pimping this film before every movie I have seen since March?
‘Immortals’ – One huge friggin’ mess of an action movie, from the guy who brought you some other huge friggin’ messy action movies.
On to the review!
‘Cowboys and Aliens’ has two things that should interest you: Cowboys, and aliens. Now, a gritty, relentlessly dark cowboy movie can be really good. A gritty, relentlessly dark movie about alien invasion can be good. Making a gritty, relentlessly dark movie about cowboys fighting aliens is actually incredibly boring, especially when you tack on a Hollywood ending and leave no doubt as to how everyone in the movie will fare.
The problem here is that in trying to capture the serious tone of a dark, brooding action film starring a dark, brooding Daniel Craig as our hero with no memory, Jake, director Jon Favreau forgot to add enough detail to make us actually give a shit. There are some nice scenes later in the film that try to fill out Jake’s life, but by then it is too little, too late.
Harrison Ford actually gets to play the ‘bad guy’ for the beginning part of the film, before the movie forces us to accept him as a good guy who just happens to be a complete asshole with a heart of gold. His character, Woodrow, is the local rich cattle rancher, and Ford literally phones in his entire role. Granted, Harrison Ford phoning it in is still better than most people’s best, but you can literally see his ‘not giving a shit’ face in a few scenes.
Sam Rockwell plays a guy named ‘Doc,’ yes, just Doc, and other than Abigail Spencer as the requisite tough lady with a twist, Alice, everyone else in the film exists solely as a plot point. In fact, I could argue that Alice and Woodrow also exist as plot points, but they at least have a very slight back-story. I would also like to add that Sam Rockwell is the only guy whose character is asked to do more than brood and look tough. I would rather just watch two hours of Doc running around, being an actual human being, than sit through the incessant moodiness of Cowboys and Aliens ever again.
The whole plot can be summed up by the title. Seriously, that’s all you get. You get some cowboys, you get some aliens, and they spend their time fighting it out in New Mexico. Why New Mexico? Because the aliens love them some gold.
Yes.
The aliens…a technologically advanced race of supremely intelligent, physically superior creatures, are here to mine for gold.
Who are then defeated by nineteenth century cowboys.
Those are some dumb aliens right there.
I could go on and on about inconsistencies in the plot, the huge differences in acting displayed by much of the cast, or even just how much I now despise it when movies switch from a dark, moody scene to retina-searing whiteness, but I would rather just comment on the theater.
You see, I had the entire week off to go home for the funeral of a loved one. When I came back on Thursday, I decided to stay home Friday and get some work done around the house. I took advantage of this free day and caught the cheap noon showing. The theater was freaking packed, and it was packed with exactly the sort of people you would expect to show up for a movie at noon on a workday.
The couple next to us did not shut the hell up until about fifteen minutes into the film. Two phones went off and one person was texting while someone else kept checking the time. There was an actual mentally handicapped person in the theater who, as my wife described it, ‘squawked’ on several occasions throughout the film. When we first got to the cinemaplex, they had burned the hell out of some popcorn and the whole lobby stank. While we waited through the credits, the film actually burned up, smoking, and I got to see in person what melting film looks like on the big screen.
None of that was the most surprising. What really blew me away was that several people actually got up and left during the movie. One couple walked out the emergency exit a full hour into the movie, and a few people just up and left after the last action sequence, not even bothering to see the actual ending.
I have seen some incredibly shitty movies over the last few months…Zookeeper, Priest, Transformers 3…but this is the very first time I ever witnessed anyone actually getting up and walking out during the film.
As an addendum, it appears my wife really did not appreciate my calling Spielberg’s new movie ‘War Horse’ ‘Glue: The Movie.’ I will be sleeping on the couch if you need me.
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