My wife and I spent two hours of last Friday night, watching fairly good acting, an interesting premise, combined with a lot of Hollywood money and knowhow, fly straight into the side of desert outcropping leaving no survivors. The movie was Cowboys and Aliens with Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig holding down the bleeding roles. It really wasn't bad until the screenwriter's LSD kicked in and the unbelievable began to happen. Like Daniel Craig's character, Jake, running down an injured yet still flying alien spacecraft, (amazing feat #2). Granted, Jake is on a horse, but he has a lot of craggy desert terrain to navigate and the spacecraft he's after only has air. So, I'm guessing that in order for a horse, picking through rocks and cliffs, to keep up with, let alone pass an alien craft going say, 60 miles per hour, the horse would have to travel about 180mph. Ok, he catches up to the alien craft, passes it, and jumps off his horse and lands on said spacecraft which is slightly below him in a canyon (amazing feat #3). At this point, intelligent life left the movie. But let's now go back to amazing feat #1. An alien craft had crashed because of Jakes ejaculating wrist gizmo. The cowboys walk up to the craft which has a low and narrow profile. The fuselage of the vessel is not higher than their knees and could barely fit Twiggy side to side. No biggie at this point because you're thinking, "ah, area 51-type aliens— little guys with big eyes." The wounded alien had left the craft unseen, but left a trail so the posse tracks him. The footprint of the unseen creature is longer than the nose section of the alien attack vessel. When they finally see the alien, he's a good 8' tall. So this alien image harkens you back to the street scene and causes one to ponder, "Oh yeah, how'd this enormous creature fit in that tiny alien plane deal?"But wait, it gets worse. Jake begins to dig Olivia Wilde, who's name is Ella.That part is believable. By the way you have to love the names. The cattle baron's (Harrison Ford) name is Dollarhyde. And the memory depleted, left for dead bad guy's (Daniel Craig) name sounds like Lone-me-a-gun. When I was a kid movies made Mad Magazine at least scratch their head for caricature names. But I digress, Ella dies, rendering Jake's carrying her 20 or 30 miles, on foot, through a desert sun (amazing feat #4) futile. The indians throw her wrapped, dead body into a nice crackling fire. Conversation among whites and indians continues and nobody notices the disgusting smell of a burning body and we can only assume the smell of processed beans was masking it. And then Ella walks out of the flames and discloses that she's actually an alien who has taken this human form. She says her mission in life is defeat the evil emporer Zurg. We are not told how living in the town, Absolution, and burying her tongue into Jakes chewing tobacco prepared her for this, so this is amazing feat #5.
The aliens have a large tower structure something akin to Mordor. And oddly enough the bling on Jake's wrist needs to be thrown into the fires of Mordor in order to defeat the bad guys— I had to applaud the writers on this unique idea. But the bling won't come off of Jake's wrist—he's tried with large rocks in scenes before. But the post fire Ella tells Jake to use the Force to remove it — I had to applaud the writers on this unique idea—and Jake, heretofore a murderer and robber, conjures up enough cosmic mojo to remove the bracelet with one whiff of his newly enlightened mind. Amazing feat #6
I'd like to say the good guys defeated the bad guys. But there were no good guys, save the sappy indian hired hand — sort of adopted slave of Col. Dollarhyde. But his dying speech was so sickeningly gooey I was glad when he breathed his last.
The apostle Paul commands me to approve things that are excellent and there was one scene I hope ends up on YouTube, and that is where Jake Lone-me-a-gun is rolling a cig. While he's rolling this cigarette, the camera is close up on Daniel Craig's impressive forearms. Watching that much muscle perform such a delicate maneuver was cool. Another plus was the guitar work, I believe the title has Cabin in it -- great tune, albeit short.
