Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
Directed by Jon Favreau
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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5 films that influenced Cowboys & Aliens
What critics say influenced Cowboys & Aliens
Still, “Cowboys & Aliens’’ is looking like a fairly uninspired remake of the 1959 John Wayne classic “Rio Bravo’’ when, quite suddenly, the spaceship hits the fan.
Think Stagecoach and Rio Bravo melded with Aliens and Independence Day and you’ve nailed the ho-hum plot.
Whatever the virtues of the comic book this came from, the story here is a simple hybrid — “Rio Bravo” Western glued to “Star Wars” sci-fi quest.
There isn’t the tension that one could cut with a knife, nor the kind of diva-ish melodrama courtesy of Joan Crawford in “Johnny Guitar.”
Marketing for Cowboys & Aliens may trumpet the pairing of Indiana Jones and James Bond (much as it did when Sean Connery joined Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ), but neither lead actor is playing his character here the way he might in a franchise film.
Yet Favreau, a workmanlike but improving director when it comes to shaping complex matters of visual mayhem, has an ace in the hole, revealed in, among others, the first "Iron Man."
As directed by Jon Favreau (“Iron Man’’), “Cowboys & Aliens’’ is a hell-for-leather action film with a healthy serving of scares.
With good special effects, exciting confrontations and a stellar cast, director Jon Favreau ("Iron Man") manages to make up for a very predictable plot.
Favreau cemented his blockbuster-cred with the two "Iron Man" movies, so we know the guy knows how to blow stuff up and have a great deal of fun behind the camera.
The director, Jon Favreau, did Iron Man and Elf.
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While the presence of Steve Oedekerk (Ace Ventura, Bruce Almighty) in the rather voluminous list of screenwriters throwing ingredients into the stew would seem to suggest that this film perhaps started in a more comic vein, under the direction of Jon Favreau (Iron Man) it took a decidedly serious turn, trading in potential silliness for an aura of grave austerity that sometimes feels entirely at odds with images in which, well, cowboys and aliens share the same screen space.