Rootin' Tootin' Cowboys (and Aliens)

If you’re looking for the most ridiculous movie of the year you’d be hard pressed to find something more bizarre than Cowboys and Aliens starring Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford.

Set sometime in the old West the movie centres around a cowboy called Jake (Daniel Craig) who gets abducted by aliens, as was quite common in them there days, and finds himself mysteriously back on the cold sandy planet we call Earth with an alien weapon attached to his wrist.

Harrison Ford plays baddie come goodie, Woodrow, who owns much of the land in the town and becomes distressed by the mysterious disappearance of his cattle and therefore money. He gets no such alien weapon, plenty of normal guns though.

Jake, being the local bad-ass, gets a lot of unwanted attention from bandits and Woodrow’s idiot son, but these prove nothing more than mild annoyances due to the ridiculously powerful weapon he wields on his left-wrist.

It gets weirder.

The aliens attack the town, with their mission to harvest the valuable gold, and Jake and Woodrow find themselves teaming up to unite the town, beat the aliens and rescue the townspeople. They set off on a pilgrimage to the alien’s temporary base on the desert along with an enigmatic woman called Ella, played by Olivia Wilde. She does a good job of being captured and rescued and being killed and resurrected…

Yeah, it gets weirder.

To be fair to Cowboys and Aliens, its existence in the summer of 2011 was actually refreshing amongst most of the disappointing blockbusters that hit the big screen. It’s just a simple movie that’s not to be taken seriously. And the makers knew this when making it.

Sure it’s ridiculous, but you know that from the off. It’s called Cowboys and Aliens for crying out loud! That being said it still manages to be gritty with good action scenes and special effects that don’t feel tacked on like in other movies.

Though it was released in the same period as massive blockbusters like Transformers 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean, it was easily one of the best movies of the summer because it wasn’t boring to watch, had a simple plot, and didn’t take itself too seriously.

Okay, so Cowboys and Aliens is never going to make anyone’s top ten movies of all-time list, but it is however a decent and enjoyable watch with good effects, a great cast and a bizarre storyline that’s as good a way to spend a couple of hours as anything else is.

Final Verdict: 4 Stars. A charming and ridiculous popcorn movie that’s worth a watch.