While Craig makes a surprisingly convincing cowboy, the frustratingly stoic character belongs in another film altogether. Craig's character believes the aliens hold the key to unlocking his past, and with Dolarhyde's son Percy among the kidnapped, the pair decide to set aside their differences and pursue a common goal.įavreau never gives the amusing premise the chance it deserves and the film stumbles from one po-faced encounter to the next. Clearly outmatching the cowboys, the spacemen whisk away whomever they please for whatever purpose. When it inevitably arrives, the stand-off between Craig's and Ford's characters is cut short by silver flying machines firing energy weapons. The heir of Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name, Craig's Man With No Memory does it not because it is the right thing to do, but simply because he dislikes the good-for-nothin' boy. When Dolarhyde's troublemakin' son Percy (Paul Dano) begins to bully and extort money from the townsfolk in broad daylight, Craig's anti-hero teaches him a lesson in humility. Among them is the beautiful but mysterious Ella (Olivia Wilde), who appears to be the only inhabitant of the town capable of washing more than once a month. Absolution, he learns, is a failed mining community and its population now lives in the grip of Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), a wealthy and heartless ranch owner. After stealing a horse, some weapons and cowboy get-up from some badly matched attackers, he wanders into the nearest town. The story begins with Daniel Craig's dishevelled outlaw waking up in the desert with an acute case of amnesia and a thick metal bracelet around one wrist. It makes sense, then, that Favreau would want to bring a similarly lighthearted touch to a film titled Cowboys & Aliens, right? The Marvel superhero movies, which starred Robert Downey Jr, both delivered special-effects set pieces aplenty, but truly won over audiences with an irresistible sense of humour. Memories of the half-witted Wild Wild West and the shockingly inept Jonah Hex - both of which saw gunslingers clash with futuristic weaponry - would be enough to make even the bravest cowboy start blubbing into his stetson.įresh from reaping more than a billion dollars at the box office and winning critical plaudits with two Iron Man films, the actor-turned director Jon Favreau would seem better placed than most to make this genre mash-up work. Like bodies lining the floor of a blood-soaked saloon, film history is littered with battered and broken attempts at combining Hollywood's most enduring genre - the Western - with science-fiction. Starring: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde