Review of Cowboys & Aliens (2011) by Tero H — 21 Oct 2012

Crab-like aliens are doing some mining operation in New Mexico in this western. It even has abductions and native americans. Unfortunately, it is also cliched and also refers a bit too often to other movies in the scifi genre.

For instance, when one of the aliens shows his scar to Craig's character, that reminds the viewer of the end in Signs... The aliens remind us of the ones in District 9, both are crab-like... People are captured and used for either energy or sustenance, and they are being abducted not using some sort of energy rays like in most films but with wires and hooks, both reminiscent of the War of the Worlds.. The whole abduction scene, people kept in stasis and mysterious other alien race who is benevolent to men, is screaming X-Files... The warlike nature of the aliens, just ripping minerals from Earth and moving on, and the entire idea of warring against the aliens, is reminiscent of Independence Day. I thought that the biggest similarities were with War of the Worlds.

Quite exciting, but the viewer is left to guess on the backgrounds of the characters until late in the film. The only one with a character history is Ford's character, really. Craig's is a little bit of a stereotype of a macho western man. I thought that it was unnecessary to keep the characters so shallow considering that this is a longer duration film.

Nothing about the aliens is ever explained. Is that necessary? Yes, of course. It always adds depth to any scifi movie that something is learned of the invaders. Here that is not really so on any level. They are just powermongering..well, crabs.

Many of the characters also remain a bit bland somehow, with not much depth. They never become familiar to the viewer. There is so much action orientation, that such is quite superficial. Native americans are shown, but their culture differing from that of the white man is not. Then again, nor is any background information given about the crab aliens or the other race. There is just one of them and there is an odd mixture of the spiritual and physical, yet not even any sort of metaphysical frame of reference is given. We only see a few representatives of the aliens and there is no communication or science -simply war.

So yes, theres enough action and there is an interesting science fiction idea in a potentially fresh environment. Yes, one sees both, cowboys and aliens. And Native Indians. However, all this is not quite taken advantage of, and the fresh becomes a bit bland. There is humor and the acting is really well done though, so that raised the film's level. The special effects are also very well done. Unfortunately, this is not really a classic movie, just an action blast scifi western with nice acting but too many stereotypies. Really nice potential ideas, just too bad that that is what they remained until the end: potential, which never quite came to happen.