Fridae

Critics blame Michael Cimino’s bloated epic Heaven’s Gate for killing both a studio (United Artists) and putting Westerns on the backburner of Hollywood’s output for the better part of 30 years or so. But perhaps changing tastes in American society were making the Western unprofitable, along with the growing influence of the spectacles pioneered by filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard who in exploring the outer reaches of space, displaced the American frontier in the public imagination. Ironically, both Spielberg and Howard are producers on this movie. Based on a comic book by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, Cowboys and Aliens can be seen as a long-overdue truce between the spectacles that Spielberg pioneered and the classic Westerns they marginalized, while remaining true as possible to both.

Perhaps because of the growing realisation that American Westerns (as opposed to Spaghetti Westerns) by their very nature, take us back to a time where being heroic could be a human rather than a superhuman feat, and perhaps offer a welcome break from the superhero fare crowding the cinemas. Barring the special effects, it is on this basic level that Cowboys and Aliens succeeds.

Outlaw Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wakes up in the middle of nowhere wondering what happened to him and his beloved wife, with no memory and only a mysterious bracelet on his left wrist as a clue to what had happened. Quickly killing a family of scalphunters that try to bring him in for a bounty, he arrives in the town of Absolution, in the iron grip of ruthless cattle baron and Civil War veteran Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) and his ineffectual but violent son (Paul Dano). The tension between these two equally strong-willed men ratchets up until aliens invade, abducting a number of townsfolk with them. Dolarhyde and Lonergan have to lead a posse to rescue their townsfolk, and are joined by Native Americans, Outlaws, a kid and a dog, and token female Ella (Olivia Wilde), who seems to harbour a mysterious secret.

Then we finally see the aliens and the film stops making much sense. These are tall, grey, apparently reptilian/piscine beings with a chest cavity from which two smaller hands reach out, and their apparent goal is nothing more than a simple one of killing off the inhabitants and strip-mining gold from planets. Not only because from an evolutionary standpoint one wonders why they needed to evolve the two smaller hands in their chest cavities, but they seem so ill-conceived in their modus operandi that the requisite large action setpiece at the end loses much of its credibility because of it.

Thankfully, where the script retains its Western heart is in its story, which is a morality play backed by the observation of the town preacher (Clancy Brown) that he has seen “bad men do good things, and good men do bad things”.  Both Longergan and Dolarhyde are well-thought out characters whose varied shades of gray make them convincing anti-heroes.The script gives thought into developing their actions and personalities, which makes their friend and foe relationship the most satisfying bit of the movie. The rest of the posse have their own individual arcs, all of which are satisfyingly developed enough, no more, no less.

Cowboys and Aliens is a silly, entertaining and welcome revival of a long-abandoned genre, offering better characterisation than most summer films and driven by the strong presences of Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford.