“Cowboys & Aliens” is an old fashioned western storyline uniquely when intertwined with aliens invading from outer space. It’s the 1870s when Daniel Craig’s character awakens on a desert land, wounded, wearing a strange metallic bracelet on one wrist, and no memory of his past life, how he got there, and why he’s wanted dead or alive. Bit by piece, remembrances of a loving woman, scattered pieces of gold, and a strange, ugly alien creature conducting a bodily experiment, it’s discovered he’s Jake Lonergan. He’s tough-as-nails, terse, and rides roughshod over all adversaries. Enter Harrison Ford’s Col. Woodrow Dolarhyde, the town’s ruling citizen and cattle baron. His smart aleck-y, pompous son Percy (Paul Dano) has a run-in with Jake and gets his lumps as his father and the stranger clash. A local beauty, enigmatic Ella Swenson (Olivia Wilde), a gun slinging gal seems to have knowledge of Jake that he doesn’t. When science-fiction meets the old west, the unprecedented preamble becomes routine with shoot-outs and alien monsters.
Jon Favreau directs the initially intriguing plot set against western landscapes stylishly photographed. Still durable and impressively effective, Harrison Ford is second billed to Daniel Craig in the two-storied oater. Relegated to the background as a supporting character, Sam Rockwell is affecting as a saloonkeeper who joins the fight for survival in this actioner of an invasion by a futuristic spaceship in the wild Wild West.
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