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Cowboys & Aliens is a 2011 sci-fi thriller set in the old American west where a race of space aliens have come to invade Earth. Sounds like a cool idea, right? Well it is and for the most part is a pretty entertaining flick with some cool effects and a great cast. Directed by Jon Favreau and based on a popular graphic novel, it was one of the most highly-anticipated movies of that year, with hype reaching almost unprecedented levels. While it did moderately well at the box office, audiences didn’t quite embrace the film and critics fell fully split on whether it was worth a watch. Whichever side you stand on, the movie does have plenty good going for it, and like every movie, has one great moment.[/nextpage][nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
Daniel Craig plays Jake Lonergan, a drifter who wakes in the desert with no memory and a strange piece of metal wrapped around his wrist. Making his way into the dusty town of Absolution, he meets a group of eccentrics, including the local sheriff (Keith Carradine), who recognizes him as a wanted gunman. He ends up resisting arrest but gets knocked out by the mysterious Ella Swenson (Olivia Wilde), who eventually takes to helping him, while haggard rancher Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) himself has beef with him. That leads to a standoff, but before bullets fly, aliens show up and start shooting up the place on their own, abducting townsfolk, leaving Dolarhyde, Ella, and Jake to figure out what the hell is going on.[/nextpage][nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
While the film doesn’t quite have the edge it should, taking rather perfunctorily to both the western and the alien invasion genres, there’s no getting past its terrific momentum. Favreau knows action and puts together a string of increasingly energetic and convincing set pieces absolutely keeping this a compelling watch, even if narratively it doesn’t always have the impact it works for. Still, Craig and Ford in the same cast? This is something to celebrate and the two deserve a lot of praise, both for fitting damn good in a western but also being just what we expect. Total badass.[/nextpage][nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
So, let’s skip ahead. The story sees Dolarhyde, Ella, Jake, and few of the remaining survivors of the town form a posse and head out into the prarie to find the aliens and hopefully rescue the abducted. Jake is having flashbacks of a cabin and a beautiful woman (Abigail Spencer – above) taken by aliens, trying to piece together how he came to be equipped with their technology and his loss of memory. At one point, they are attacked again, small flying ships zipping about taking out horseback riders with these electrical tentacle thingys, of which one gets hold of Ella. Jake, having wounded the craft with his wrist rocket – keeping it from getting any real altitude – takes after it on his horse, eventually making a leap onto its back and saving the girl, having them crash into a small river. Success. [/nextpage][nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
Nope. Once he and she are ashore, out from the water springs the alien pilot and takes a nasty strike at Ella, tossing her meters down the shore with a gaping stomach wound. Too late, Jake kills the creature, the hit on Ella mortal. He carries her back to the posse where she dies, him crushed for reasons the end of this paragraphs explains. It’s then when riders from the nearby Chiricahua Apache Native Americans show up and take everyone back to their tribe, blaming them for the evil that has come to their land. As the posse are tied up and Dolarhyde argues with their chief, Ella’s body is wrapped and tossed into a fire. Jake looks on, believing now he’s lost two women by his own hand. He’s really having a bad day.[/nextpage][nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
I won’t spoil what happens next, but not long after, Jake finds himself given a potent mixture from the Native Americans, one that begins to restore his memory. While lying in the dirt, as the posse and Apache look on, he sees himself staring at the girl from his flashbacks, her name Alice, and she looking at him. Thing is, they aren’t in sunlit meadow as suggested, but actually on alien lab tables … oh, and she’s slowly getting brutally gutted, eventually turned to ash by a hollow blue light that kills her. It ain’t pretty. On a table beside her, Jake realizes he’s next, and when the alien about to tear him up makes a mistake, leaving itself open to a swing, Jake slips on the open metal wrist band and makes an escape.[/nextpage][nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
I really like how this scene unfolds, with Jake descending under the influence of the drugs, ‘seeing’ a flittering hummingbird dancing above his eyes, a dreamy shift in the music (by Harry Gregson-Williams) setting the tone as he slips into memory. He clearly loved Alice, so much so that even though the flashback is soaked in horror, it begins in warmth, the two in a gentle, romantic embrace that only then turns sour. From there, the scene takes on a familiar look, reminding me of this moment from Fire in the Sky, where Jake and Alice are being probed and examined, a trope of the alien abduction genre. [/nextpage][nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
What this moment truly does best though is generate greater sympathy for Jake, a man who made a mistake, one that he firmly believes leaves him responsibly for the death of Alice. The flashbacks building up to this are purposefully abstract and ambiguous, leading to this sequence that fills in the final blanks, completing the circle and at last, giving Jake back the memory he’s lost, but more importantly, the motivation to see this to the bloody end. Good thing he’s got that wrist rocket.[/nextpage][nextpage title=”NEXT” ]
Cowboys & Aliens isn’t a movie about emotions, a film more about the spectacle and action, which it has in spades. However, Jake’s story is the heart of it all, and what better way to keep him not only identifiable with the audience but even more so, vulnerable, than with love the reason behind it all. This admittedly harrowing moment is essentially the loss of that love and since it comes with such abject guilt, makes Jake a character of greater depth. We respond to him, feel for him, and by the third act, are fully behind him. It’s a great cinematic moment.[/nextpage]