Cowboys & Aliens (BluRay)
4 out of 5 stars
My father lent me his BluRay of Cowboys & Aliens when he came for dinner Tuesday evening. We would not have been able to view it via Netflix for another week or two otherwise. After a dinner of leftovers (more ham and home-made bread), we sat down to watch the BluRay. As usual, the combination of dinner and a movie put Terry into a food coma within thirty minutes, but Rachelle and I made it through to the credits without dozing off.
Daniel Craig did well, if stoically, as an archetypical Western character. Olivia Wilde’s performance didn’t wow me, but that’s usual for her. I still think her best performance to be Quorra in Tron: Legacy. I enjoyed Harrison Ford in a different type of role than what I’ve seen him do before. I also enjoyed Rockwell and Beach’s performances.
But by far my favorite, albeit not a long lived character, was rendered by Clancy Brown, who normally suffers under the stigma of villainous typecasting, this time around he stretched his wings as a gun toting man of the cloth who delivered some of the most memorable dialogue.
Overall, the movie was much better than I thought it would be and I’m sorry I skipped seeing it at the movie theater this past summer, especially after seeing the incredible cinematography (courtesy of the great state of New Mexico). While four out of five stars might be stretching it a bit (considering the believability of the story and circumstances), I can’t say I didn’t completely enjoy my evening mash-up of two of my favorite movie genres: westerns and scifi flicks. The Old West has never been wilder!
