It’s “Alien Invasion” Day on Alabama Liberal and so that includes a review of this movie which tries to join two genres: alien invasion movies (which have been almost exhausted) and westerns (which have been almost entirely ignored for two decades). I can’t say it’s entirely successful, but I absolutely appreciate the effort. In a summer of the same old shit, this is probably the most original big budget movie out there.
What Works: In a summer of the same old shit, this is probably the most original big budget movie out there…
What Doesn’t Work: Except that it doesn’t FEEL original. It technically is but you can almost feel the gears turning to make it more predictable and numbing than it has to be. And I feel a big part of that is because of studio flop sweat in green lighting a Western. They are so afraid young audiences won’t go watch one, they practically make it a reality by draining the genre of anything off kilter. I applaud the effort of this movie, but there’s no denying it should have been a lot better.
Also, Daniel Craig doesn’t really do it for me like he does most people. His coldness can be intriguing in such a well known character like James Bond but it almost freezes you out of caring about some of his other characters, as is the case in this movie. Plus, he deploys a seriously awful, inconsistent accent that shows he hasn’t quite mastered the American dialect for an entire movie. Harrison Ford equally phones it in with his grouchy land baron character, and no one else in the cast makes much of an impression either. The great Walton Goggins (tearing up the small screen in Justified and previously The Shield) shows up for a few scenes but it once again shows that movies don’t know how to use his rural cunning as well as TV does.
What I Would Have Done Differently: The first hour pulls you in with mystery and surprise (I particularly like an upside down river boat) but that is quickly abandoned for routine shootouts later on. Plus, the aliens themselves are too vague and routine looking. Hollywood needs to figure out how to design an alien that can still scare us with surprise decades after Ridley Scott’s Alien.