GENRE: Action, Western, Sci-Fi
RATING: PG 13 for violence and partial nudity
RUNTIME: 1 hours and 58 minutes
STARRING: Daniel Craig (Bond), Harrison Ford (Indy), Olivia Wilde (House), Sam Rockwell (Iron Man 2)
DIRECTOR: Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Iron Man 2)
WRITERS: Robert Orci & Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek, Transformers) Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby (Iron Man, Children of Men) Damon Lindelof (Lost, Star Trek Sequel)
PLOT: Spaceships arrive in the Old West and abduct the citizens of a poor Arizona town. The posse tries to get them back.
FIVE OBSERVATIONS:
1 This film smartly takes the content seriously; it’s not campy in any way. The cowboys don’t even call the intruders ‘aliens’ and Daniel Craig is surprised when he flies in the air. There is a sense of authenticity even though it deals with extra-terrestrials. I thought the concept worked even though many critics didn’t think they pulled it off nearly well enough.
2 My biggest issue is that I didn’t care too much about what happened to Craig or Ford’s characters. I didn’t feel myself rooting for them like they wanted me to. This is where the story needed a little more help.
3 I was rooting for Rockwell’s Doc instead. He was someone you could feel for. I also got a kick out of Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine, There Will Be Blood) as the snotty son of Harrison Ford. Keith Carradine’s (Dexter) sheriff wasn’t too bad either.
4 Even though the subject matter was serious, there were still plenty of funny lines throughout the film. I don’t know which of the five writers wrote which but the humour seemed pretty Lindelof-y. Great gun pointing scene.
5 The fight between the aliens and the posse is too cliché. A small gun against a large alien? Not a chance. While the aliens kill a bunch a people, most are the faceless ones we don’t care about. When someone Important dies, the fighting seems to stop so we can have some final words. The last 30 minutes of the film kind of takes away from all the good stuff in the beginning. Oh well.
RECOMMENDATION: DVD is good enough
UPCOMING REVIEWS: Crazy, Stupid Love
No comments:
Post a Comment