Cowboys & Aliens

2011 "First Contact. Last Stand."
6| 1h59m| PG-13| en| More Info
Released: 29 July 2011 Released
Producted By: DreamWorks Pictures
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.cowboysandaliensmovie.com/
Synopsis

A stranger stumbles into the desert town of Absolution with no memory of his past and a futuristic shackle around his wrist. With the help of mysterious beauty Ella and the iron-fisted Colonel Dolarhyde, he finds himself leading an unlikely posse of cowboys, outlaws, and Apache warriors against a common enemy from beyond this world in an epic showdown for survival.

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Reviews

ChanBot i must have seen a different film!!
Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.
Micransix Crappy film
Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
gpeltz Spoiler Alert, Plot details discussed. OK Coboys and Alines, very funny. like in Cowboys and Indians. I was not exactly blown away by the title. What blew me away was the first glorious shot. The cinamatography was just excellent; Wide screen and glorious, yet capturing the drama of the graphic novel visual power, ,Matthew Libatique captured the sweep and glory of New Mexicos grandest landscapes. Likewise appropriate was the fine score, reminiscent of Elmer bernstiens western sagas. Here the composer is Harry Greyson-Williams. Director Jon Favreau pulled all the elements together and created a grand but overlooked gem. As strange as the premise is, it is remarkably successful in blending the genera''s of Westerns and Science Fiction. The narrative is strange, but the star power is stellar, We watch two pros at the top of their game. Daniel Craig is the lead, a gunslinger named Jake Lonergan, awakening in the deep desert, with an iron wrist cuff. He also has amnesia and no recollection of who he is. To make matters worse, he is about to be robbed and killed by three armed bandits. The movie quickly establishes that Craig's character is not to me messed with. The Town of Absolution was built out of the vast landscape, A small town with the Saloon, jailhouse and Main-street. The good Sheriff John Taggeart, played by Kieth Carradine, The doc, who runs the bar with his hot blooded wife,is played by Sam Rockwell. Abagail Spencer and Olivia Wilde fill the female leads. The Villan here is the wealthy land Barron, Woodrow Dolarhyde. played with rugged vigor by Harrison Ford. Throw in about forty outlaw armies and the Apache nation and you have a whole solid fighting force to defeat ? what ? The western setting and mind set finds the flying machines that resemble robot dragonfles, as well as the malevolent creatures as demons. they have no other context to comprehend the invaders, who are here, looking for gold and plunder. The creatures are convincingly portrayed as ugly things with grotesque limbs that erupt from their hideous bellys. Here I had to take issue, the creators of the technology could no way be represented by this brutish pack of hunters. Where is their science. They have advanced technology but act like barbarians. There is no way a pack of cowboys and Indians could defeat them. unless. they had an inside lead, This is where the character Ella, the mysterious, played by Olivia Wilde. She is also a stranger to our planet, and knows how to defeat the evil invaders. The film builds wonderfully to the splendid climax that gives you maximum bang for your buck. thanks to the effects folks at Industrial Light and Magic. So what did I not like, Only one thing, the weak title. Hey guys, re release it but call it, "The Sorrowful Saga of Gunslinger Jake". or "Gunslinger Jake and the Demons". or "Western Spaces". anything but Cowboys and Aliens. This gets eight and a half "bravo for pulling it off" Stars out of Ten
richardjp-17225 Seems to be really miscast with James Bond playing Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones playing a bit of a bad guy and Clancy Brown playing the kindly preist. It all works really well though and it's a very entertaining movie though.
Easygoer10 I liked this little film. Yes, it is flawed, however the largest flaw I find was the ignorance of the producers (namely S. Spielberg & R. Howard). Hadn't anyone seen the huge cult smash Firefly? It was on for a season in 2002 and 2003? Also the followup big screen film "Serenity", made in 2005. I was furious with the "making of" featurette on disc for "Cowboys and Aliens", which was made almost a decade after Joss Whedon's brilliant series I mentioned. You have to be a complete moron to not know the setting is 500 years in the future, everyone speaks a combination of English and Mandarin (Chinese). All the main characters live on a spaceship, and are basically small time criminals; however, they have morals, character, are funny, are sad, the entire lot. It is an incredibly brilliant show, and has some very good actors. For example, Adam Baldwin ("Animal Mother" from Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam flick "Full Metal Jacket"; Morena Baccarin, a gorgeous Brazilian actress who has done much TV sci-fi; the late Ron Glass, who was a star on "Barney Miller" for all 7 seasons, Alan Tudyk, a very versatile actor, etc. "Serenity" stars Chiwetel Eijofor plus the rest of the cast. Best of all are Summer Glau, a highly trained ballet dancer who is also an actress. Her character is "River Tam". Another key role is Captain Malcolm Reynolds, played wonderfully by Nathan Fillion ("Saving Private Ryan"). All of them are cast perfectly. These actors truly live their roles. The series and film is pretty much centered around these 9 characters on a spaceship. It is like a combination of post Civil War America, but set 500 years into our future. Whoever wrote "Cowboys and Acknowledge this. Not to do so is an affront to to Joss Whedon. It is shameful. Joss Whedon got a 5 minute standing ovation at the 2005 Comic con. He invented the entire world of this beloved show and film. They have literally millions of fans who wrote in to Fox from all over the world. When it was canceled by Fox, so many of these fans petitioned them. USA finally aired a few more episodes. Fans took out a full page ad in the Hollywood Reporter thanking every advertising sponsor, networks, studios, etc. Finally, 2 or 3 years later, Universal gave Joss Whedon the green light for a feature film. Whedon is one of the most underrated director in Hollywood today. Serenity only cost $30 million to make, which they had to beg and borrow to get. I think 90% of the primary characters stunts were done by the actors themselves. In particular Summer Glau (who plays Summer Tam). She is a trained ballerina, and Firefly was her very first acting job. In spite of this, she continued practice as a ballerina daily in addition to her own acting work ethic on Firefly. Joss Whedon knew she could do near impossible bending and splits, so he sent her to fight camp training for over 3 months daily prior to even beginning the film. The stunt crew was blown away with her ability to bend into almost impossible positions. This, coupled with a very sharp memory, allowed her to do She could do 15 to 20 or 25 straight moves, kicks and twists in a row without stopping, which is unheard of for someone that is not an action star. One last thing about Cowboys and Aliens. They had a whopping $163 million dollar budget, and the worldwide sales were only $173 million: $10 million over this bloated budget. Best of all, please note Firefly is the only canceled TV series to date which went on to be made into a successful big screen film: Serenity. Even though Fox only aired 11 of the 14 episode season; even though Fox aired them in the wrong order; even though the budget was tiny by 2005 standards: What Joss Whedon did is only more impressive.
fedor8 It's an unwritten rule that when you see many people involved in the screenplay, the movie's bound to be a mess. Movies that credit eight people as writers might as well just simply credit the script to "Alan Smithee". This project must have been passed from one clueless Hollywood writer to the next, each one getting fired or giving up for whatever issues relating to Ego, stupidity, insanity or any other hollywoodisms. If I want characterization I watch a Shakespeare play. (Which I never do.) This is just your typical pulp-fiction nonsense, so why this over-focus on relationships? More aliens, more action, more weird gadgets – and less predictable, soppy BS. Nobody gives a hoot about various loves, squabbles, and rivalries, especially with this dull cast: just get on with it.Aside from the usual western clichés, many of which weaseled their way into the script, there is so much poor logic. For one thing, why does Wilde not have a spaceship or at least some fancy-shmancy alien weaponry to help the cowboys with? Did she arrive to Earth via a flying saucer or did she ride in on a damn donkey? Her only talent seems to be the cretinous ability to emerge from fire – unscathed – despite the fact that as a visiting alien she should have had a LOT more to offer than her square jaw and bad acting.Honestly, I have rarely seen a human whose jaw that's wider than the upper part of the head. Worse yet, she's female. Well, an alien female. So, OK, fine, in a sense she is the ideal choice to play an alien – since Sissy Spacek was too old for the role. Olivia Wilde is, of course, yet another relentlessly hyped nepotistic Hollywood commodity, a talent-free hack that got her foot in the door sans auditions, simply because she has the right breeding and connections. Once again, movies are not about the artistry, but about who-you-know and what-politics-you-practice. Yes, Olivia is yet another textbook Hollywood vegan, complete with white-guilt activism and a BMI of less than 11. She is so skinny, her arms look like toothpicks, and the less said about her bizarre-shaped sort-of-rectangular anorexic head, the better.So how does ANY living creature in the cosmos get to become immune to the effects of fire? Are her molecules any different from the stuff we know of? If the alien monsters react to bullets and spears, then at the very least a fire should have roasted Olivia, who - judging by the fact that her race was so weak that they were obliterated by those same monsters – should be even more prone to destruction than the malicious beasties. And yet, it turns out her race is practically immortal! So, yes, it certainly makes a lot of sense that her race was destroyed while the gun-wielding humans prevailed. Do these Tinseltown writers use only white powder to write their popcorny garbage? Should cocaine get writing credits too? Besides, what disappointment when I saw Olivia emerge from that flame: yet another typical career of a Hollywood nepotist - you can't kill it, no matter what you do. Just look at Jennifer Aniston! If you're a nepotist, you can have 10 flops in a row and still get major roles served to you on a plate. Friggin' "Hollywood royalty" indeed. Coz this certainly isn't the case with most non-nepotists, who don't get the benefit of early hype and sectarian-like career-nudging.Craig's bracelet is a story unto itself. For some bizarre reason he gets to control it, even though it was built for telepathic use for the monsters only. Even sillier, the shortest Bond ever only manages to get it off his arm after a KISS from Olivia – an alien who should have no sexual desire toward humans. A rather stupid scene of the sort that pulp fiction can get away with, but in comic-book form. Movies are a little different. Suspension of disbelief should not have to mean suspension of all logic.How about the aliens' motives for coming all the way to Earth? Yup, gold. These EIGHT white-powder-sniffing writers could not come up with anything cleverer than what we already laughed at in the supremely so-bad-it's-good mongoose opus called "Battlefield Earth". How low can you stoop as a writer when you have to borrow plot-devices from L Ron Hubbard's idiotic novels? The notion that an alien race would bother coming all the way to Earth just to pick up a few measly kilos of gold is mind-bogglingly dumb, evoking images of Travolta as a fey alien inspecting gold bullion – a classic moment right up there with Ed Wood's "Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!" Even sillier is the scene when they actually steal Craig's pitiful loot. You've got a powerful alien race that resorts to snatching a handful of coins of gold from some pathetic Wild West sociopath.Craig does the movie-cliché low-whisper hiss (just think of Alec Baldwin or Steven Segal) to hide his fake cowboy accent. I'd have preferred to see him relax with an English accent, because, let's face it: not EVERY cowboy was born in America. Many arrived from Britain. But how can a cokehead know that?Yet Craig is positively convincing next to Ford who is a caricature. As for Rockwell, I was glad his role was atypically subdued; there were no opportunities for those annoying wise-ass grins of his. Perhaps he is slowly getting prepared for more "serious" middle-age roles that might get him an Oscar or two (provided he diligently advertises his left-wing activism).One of the positive things in C&A is the miraculous fact that the Indians aren't portrayed as philosophical, pacifistic noble savages. For Indians to get a mostly old-school-Hollywood treatment is pretty amazing in this zombie era of Political Correctness. How the hell did THAT kind of Indian portrayal sneak itself into a modern film?