Besides, it’s more fun to unpack Jake’s past as he does, in a fit of flashbacks and seat-of-his-pants epiphanies. The youth carelessly provokes Craig’s character, whose unflinching response indicates the kind of hero we’re dealing with.Įver so gradually, further clues emerge, revealing the amnesia-stricken Jake Lonergan as a wanted man and … well, anything else said about his origins would constitute a spoiler. Back in town, a dirtheap fittingly named Absolution, Paul Dano plays the tyrannical son of local cattle baron Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford). He reaches for a bloody wound at his side and discovers a strange manacle cuffed to his wrist and a lovely stranger’s tintype photograph lying in the dust at his feet - and so begins the mystery of how this loner will come to save humankind from a battalion of unidentified, unfriendly and most unwelcome flying objects.Īfter the muddled “Iron Man 2,” this feels like a return to a more patient, more coherent storytelling style for Favreau, who finds imaginative ways to introduce each character before bringing on the alien mayhem. “ Cowboys & Aliens” begins like a 19th-century Bourne movie, with Daniel Craig playing a stone-cold killer who wakes up in the middle of the New Mexico desert, his memory a blank. (Besides, what was “ Raiders of the Lost Ark,” if not a prototype for such a B-movie mash-up?) Abrams and Michael Bay), Favreau has emerged the most immediate heir to the master’s heartfelt showmanship. Still, of all the directors to work in exec producer Steven Spielberg’s shadow (including J.J.
Stewart, Bobby Cohen and Ryan Kavanaugh executive produce.A quick tour through Favreau’s credits reveals a helmer who has managed to spin hearty entertainment from ever more anemic sources - first a bedtime story (“Zathura”), then a comicbook series (“Iron Man”), and now a mere illustration, intended to be the cover of a then-unpublished graphic novel. Grazer, Howard, Rosenberg, Kurtzman and Orci produce. United against a common enemy, they will prepare for an epic showdown for survival.The script for Cowboys & Aliens is by Star Trek’s Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci and Damon Lindelof (television’s Lost), based on Platinum Studios’ graphic novel created by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg. With the help of the elusive traveler Ella (Olivia Wilde), he pulls together a posse comprised of former opponents-townsfolk, Dolarhyde and his boys, outlaws and Apache warriors-all in danger of annihilation. As this gunslinger slowly starts to remember who he is and where he’s been, he realizes he holds a secret that could give the town a fighting chance against the alien force. Now, the stranger they rejected is their only hope for salvation. Screaming down with breathtaking velocity and blinding lights to abduct the helpless one by one, these monsters challenge everything the residents have ever known. But Absolution is about to experience fear it can scarcely comprehend as the desolate city is attacked by marauders from the sky. What he discovers is that the people of Absolution don’t welcome strangers, and nobody makes a move on its streets unless ordered to do so by the iron-fisted Colonel Dolarhyde (Ford). The only hint to his history is a mysterious shackle that encircles one wrist. A stranger (Craig) with no memory of his past stumbles into the hard desert town of Absolution. Joined by an arsenal of top moviemakers-Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci-he brings an all-new action thriller that will take audiences into the Old West, where a lone cowboy leads an uprising against a terror from beyond our world.1875.
Blockbuster filmmaker Jon Favreau directs Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford in an event film for summer 2011 that crosses the classic Western with the alien-invasion movie in a blazingly original way: Cowboys & Aliens.