Miscast star mars fun, effects-laden 'Cowboys & Aliens'
The joys to be appreciated in Jon Favreau's genre-smashing action film "Cowboys & Aliens" are numerous:
Harrison Ford's hilariously surly cattle baron.
Daniel Craig's stoically Eastwoodesque outlaw.
Vintage 1950s flying saucer invasion paranoia.
Top-notch special effects with excellent, eardrum-puncturing sound.
A restrained sense of humor.
But ... Olivia Wilde's miscast, misguided Wild West woman resembling a Mabelline model who packs a six gun strapped around a tight and shimmering pearl-colored outfit?
She looks out of place, talks out of place and acts out of place. The screenplay poses a reason why she seems so different, but the rules against spoilers prohibit me from saying anything further.
I can tell you that there comes a scene where Wilde's character, Ella Swenson, takes "Cowboys & Aliens" out of spoof mode and drags it into sheer, off-the-charts dumbness, a scene that triggers the movie's quick erosion from a fascinating mystery into a noisy, bloated, special effects and cliché extravaganza.
Let's come back to her later.
For now, let's lighten up and assume that a movie titled "Cowboys & Aliens" isn't looking to make the U.S. National Film Registry any time soon.
Craig, the erstwhile James Bond, cuts a convincing figure as a cowboy decked out in chaps, a 7.5 gallon hat and a dandy American accent.
He wakes up in the desert alone. Like a Wild West ancestor of Jason Bourne, he has no memory of how he got there. He has a wound in his side and a strange bracelet attached to his left wrist.
We know he's a man of violence the moment a motley band of would-be Comancheros tries to accost him, and he effortlessly wipes them out.
Eventually, he realizes he's really Jake Lonergan, a wanted desperado, gang leader and killer.
Working from a script cobbled together by six writers, Favreau delights in setting up a regular, old-fashioned western before the aliens appear.
Percy Dolarhyde (Paul Dano in weasel mode), the immature, bullying son of powerful cattle baron Woodrow Dolarhyde (Ford), gets tossed in the clink after wounding a deputy sheriff.
Dad brings his hired gang into the town - fittingly called Absolution - to spring Percy. Then, just when the movie delves into "Rio Bravo" territory, flying machines appear and start bombarding the cowpokes with incendiary devices as the invaders lasso screaming victims and hoist them high into the heavens.
(Not that I want to question the aliens' intelligence, but if they're trying to capture human specimens, why blast them to smithereens first?)
The aliens snatch a bunch of townspeople, plus Percy and the sheriff, alias the granddad of cute youngster Emmett Taggart (Noah Ringer).
Even though Dolarhyde wants to punish Lonergan for stealing his gold coins (<I>foreshadowing alert!), </I>the two form a reluctant alliance to find the alien base and free the captives.
Dolarhyde wouldn't ordinarily do this, except Lonergan's weird bracelet is apparently the only weapon that can shoot down the insectlike flying machines and kill their monstrously hideous pilots.
"Cowboys & Aliens" is first and foremost a western, with all the familiar trappings: a cute kid, a threatened dog, a bartender named Doc (Sam Rockwell), a presumed lady of the evening (Wilde), the ruthless cattle baron (Ford) and the silent gunslinger (Craig).
There's also an inspiring sense of American unity propelling this story, inasmuch as the Apaches join the cowboys to repel the invaders and save their loved ones. (The aliens turn out to be equal opportunity kidnappers.)
Still, the fascinating, challenging mystery that Favreau starts with devolves into pyrotechnic nonsense that could use one more pass through the editing software to tighten up the narrative.
Then we have the alluring Wilde inserted into the tale as a sexy marketing device for the male demographic. Her inconsistent character operates so out of whack with the rest of the story that it becomes even more witless, flat and silly.
That "Cowboys & Aliens" will become a box office smash with $100 million made in record time is a foregone conclusion. After all, it's never boring.
Still, it's hard to believe that Favreau passed on directing the third "Iron Man" movie for this mishmash of a genre smash.
“Cowboys & Aliens”
Starring: Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Paul Dano
Directed by: Jon Favreau
Other: A Universal Pictures release.
Rated: PG-13 for partial nudity, violence. 118 minutes