Film review: Cowboys & Aliens

Titles for movie mash-ups tend to be pretty clear. Alien vs. Predator. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Aliens (plural) vs. Predator (singular). There’s no mistaking what you’re going to get.

Cowboys & Aliens delivers what it promises: namely, cowboys and aliens – along with the brief novelty that accompanies such titles.

Based loosely on the 2006 graphic novel of the same name, and set in the late 1800s, director Jon Favreau’s film begins as any Western might. Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wakes up dirty and wounded in the middle of a desert with a mysterious cuff clamped on his wrist and no memory of the time before. When threatened by armed mercenaries, he seems, however, to conjure James Bond. He quickly thrashes the baddies, steals their chaps and steed and rides into the nearest town. Jake may be as lethal as 007 but he could use some of Bond’s cool. He rides a horse so stiffly and upright that he looks like a toddler bouncing in a Jumperoo.