Starring: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell

Directed by: Jon Favreau

Today, I decided to go to the mall for something to do and get out of the house for a while. There were two great movies out that I wanted to see. I had a choice between “Cowboys & Aliens” or “Captain America: The First Avenger”. I ended up seeing “Cowboys & Aliens” first. As for shopping, I didn’t buy much. All I picked up was Jaycee Dugard’s book “The Stolen Life”, but I’m not going to read it yet because there are other books I need to catch up on.

On with my review…

Plot/synopsis: The Old West.. where a lone cowboy leads an uprising against a terror from beyond our world. 1873. Arizona Territory. A stranger with no memory of his past stumbles into the hard desert town of Absolution. The only hint to his history is a mysterious shackle that encircles one wrist. What he discovers is that the people of Absolution don’t welcome strangers, and nobody makes a move on its streets unless ordered to do so by the iron-fisted Colonel Dolarhyde (Ford). It’s a town that lives in fear. But Absolution is about to experience fear it can scarcely comprehend as the desolate city is attacked by marauders from the sky. Screaming down with breathtaking velocity and blinding lights to abduct the helpless one by one, these monsters challenge everything the residents have ever known. Now, the stranger they rejected is their only hope for salvation. As this gunslinger slowly starts to remember who he is and where he’s been…

It’s another winner for Jon Favreau. It felt like Indiana Jones and James Bond 007 teaming up together except it’s taken place in the Wild West. Yes, the plot to the movie sounds goofy and whacky but most people don’t know that this movie was adapted from the graphic novel created by, Scott Mitchell Rosenberg. The story mixes western and sci-fi together.

For the Western part of the story, it has everything there is in the cowboy genre. The beginning of the film starts off as a serious Western film, then toward the middle it gets to the sci fi parts, when the aliens come invading their town. Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig’s character) is a mean and tough character that you don’t want to mess with, but there’s a serious and emotional part about him too. He wakes up in the middle of Wild West and finds this strange looking bracelet on his wrist that looks like some type of machine. He’s trying to remember how he got there and where the strange bracelet came from.

Then we get the hilarious Harrison Ford who plays Col. Dolarhyde who is also pretty mean and tough. With his character you get a little bit of Han Solo and Indiana Jones both at the same time. When the characters are speaking their dialogues in the film, Col. Dolarhyde would come back with some smart ass jokes that are pretty funny. Plus, Harrison Ford is such a perfect actor to play Dolarhyde because Harrison looks exactly like him in the graphic novel. Harrison did a great job nailing the character down.

There are so many alien invasion movies over the years but most of them are the same thing. Just aliens invading the city and then they have the US Army fight them off. Not with this movie. This time it’s cowboys vs. aliens. Which is what I like. Something different for once.

The action scenes were very fun and entertaining. It was a pretty action packed movie all the way through. I thought the script was pretty well written for a popcorn action movie. This is definitely one of the better popcorn action flicks I’ve seen in a while. Check it out!

Score for “Cowboys & Aliens” = *** (3 stars as in “excellent”)

Kev