“Cowboys and Aliens”
Written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindeloft, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby and Steve Oedekirk, based on the comic book by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg; Directed by Jon Favreau. Stars: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell and Paul Dano. Story: Two sides of the law, cowboys and American natives must band together to battle strange visitors from outer space in a dusty town in the late 1800s.
“Attack the Block”
Written and directed by Joe Cornish. Stars: John Boyega, Jodie Whittaker, Alex Esmael, and Nick Frost. Story: A teen gang in south London must defend their block against an alien invasion, forced to ally with a woman they recently mugged.
Seen by Lars & Adam, July 25, 2011
You know it’s summer when two let’s-kill-the-aliens movies open on the same day. One a massive blockbuster wannabe and the other a small British flick that plays in only two theaters in NYC. Since they are thematically related, it makes sense to review them together and look at what works and doesn’t for both of them.
When a movie is called “Cowboys & Aliens”, you’ve signaled from the beginning that this isn’t a movie to be taken too seriously. The first half hour of the flick plays like your classic western. A new guy comes to a small town, creates a ruckus, ruffles some feathers with the local powers that be and finds himself in trouble. Daniel Craig is excellent as the stranger, using his craggy features and blue steel gaze to great effect. It’s also nice to see Harrison Ford look less like he’s sleepwalking through a movie for once. Here he’s having fun chewing the scenery as the cattle baron of a small town, trying to reform his hopelessly spoiled son; a great turn by Paul Dano.
Then aliens attack and abduct people for unknown purposes. The good guys and the bad guys gang up in the face of a common enemy and the rest of the film is pure western – except, of course, for those aliens.
It’s a slightly uneasy blend of mystery (what’s going on with the abducted folks, where did Daniel Craig’s character come from), classic western motifs and sci-fi. Does it all add up to more than the sum of its parts? Not really. Is it pretty decent entertainment? Sure.
Director Jon Favreau is an actor himself and you can tell that the cast is having a great time, which goes a long way, when you have such accomplished actors in your movie. Olivia Wilde continues to light up every movie she’s in (she was by far the most human element of Tron. Ironically, since she was playing a digital avatar) and even though she’s playing a somewhat preposterous character here, she takes it seriously and has fun with it at the same time.
Ultimately, “Cowboys & Aliens” fail to be great because of a script that is nowhere near as clever as it thinks it is. It’s mostly a rehash of western and sci-fi clichés and once the machinery is set in motion, it’s too easy to see where it’s all going. In a summer full of great movies, it’s not enough to just be diverting.
“Attack the Block” was probably shot for about the same amount of money they spent on catering on “Cowboys & Aliens”. And while this story is not wildly original either, it’s a wonderfully written script by writer/director Joe Cornish, and it gets the balance of action, comedy and horror right. Which is no mean feat. Tonally, this reminded me of “An American Werewolf in London”, which to me is still the gold standard in blending horror and humor. Joe Cornish knows how to defuse a tense moment with a well-placed joke, just to throw you back into the thick of it one second later.
“Attack the Block” features a cast of heroes as unlikely as “Cowboys & Aliens”. It’s a bunch of young hoodlums from a South London council estate. Not a place you want to live, trust me. When a lone alien falls from the sky, they deem it ugly and decide that the right thing to do is to hunt it down and kill it. This is all done in a great spirit of fun and right after a mugging and shows that our ‘heroes’ are a bunch of ne’er-do-wells who are just one small mishap away from getting killed or put in jail. Of course killing the alien was a really bad idea, as aliens (with the possible exception of E.T.) never travel alone. So our young anti-heroes have inadvertently started an intergalactic war, which plays out on the council estate over the course of the next hour.
In addition to the great one-liners and zingers (Cornish has a background as a comedy writer), the movie is blessed with a great young cast. There are a few familiar faces in supporting roles (Nick Frost, Jodie Whitaker), but mostly it’s a cast of young unknowns carrying the movie. Special mention must go to first-time actor John Boyega who plays the gang leader, Moses, with a quiet intensity that makes him seem much older than his years. He is the one that realizes that since they are to blame for this alien invasion, they must be the ones to end it too.
Special mention to the aliens as well. Spectral Motion has created some truly original monsters that don’t resemble anything I’ve seen before. And, man, I’ve seen a lot of monsters and aliens in my time. These are, for once, not related to H.R. Giger’s seminal alien, but are very different. They are scary, but also slightly comical, which is just right for this movie.
“Attack the Block” is a lean 88 minutes long, and it flies past. It’s one of the most fun thrill rides of the summer so far. So go and support indie filmmaking at its best and see this in the theater.
ADAM:
So, you know how Lars and I roll; one movie sometimes isn’t enough. We like to challenge ourselves. And in this case, timing worked out nicely, with two movies about aliens opening up around the same time. What’s more, they couldn’t be much more opposite in regards to budget, setting, scope, execution and publicity. Perfect, we say, for some comparisons and contrasts.
So our first foray into the genre generally inhabited by little green men was the massive blockbuster “Cowboys and Aliens.” And just in case you haven’t been hit by enough media buys to know this was the big movie, it’s apparent that the suits at the studios made sure anyone with a pulse would know what this was about, right from the title. To be fair, the title’s been in place for over a decade of development, but still, the name reeks of making sure it can reach the lowest common denominator. I always feel compelled to mention my expectations for the film from the trailer. Though I don’t kid myself that anyone reads this blog in order to make decisions about what to see, I feel that there’s something to comparing shared experiences; maybe someone who hasn’t seen the film HAS seen the trailer and can compare that experience to mine. If low and behold the experience was similar, then maybe so too will the ultimate response to the movie. I sat through at least a few incarnations of the “C&A” trailer and as a result didn’t expect much. As I’ve written before, when aliens attack us in present day in films, F-16s, scud missiles and nuclear weaponry rarely takes them down; what was a Colt .45 and a lasso going to do?
And though that theory hold up as one of my biggest credibility notes in the film, it was certainly entertaining. Harrison Ford does a good job with a role different from most of his from past memory, Daniel Craig is fairly stoic as the confused lead with a cloudy memory, and Olivia Wilde looks hot, which is about all she’s hired to do here. There’s so good action, and an only slightly interesting mystery unravelled, but for the most part the film moves from a to b to c and on. Jon Favreau is his most reserved behind the camera to date, and I appreciated that. So I did enjoy it. But to sit through the first five minutes, watching a disoriented and disheveled Daniel Craig wake up in the middle of the desert and subsequently kick the asses of a gang that happen upon him — all while looking like the second coming of Steve McQueen’s made me wish this film was just called “Cowboys,” and that I’d be sitting through some great gun play with no Close Encounters at all.
It seems like it’s always the case when we compare the expensive to the indie, that the indie film is better. That was the case for me with “Attack the Block.” It’s probably not a fair comparison; when a film is so small, you have very few expectations, so when it’s good, you think it’s great. Here, in this British film, produced by Edgar Wright (Director of Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead) and featuring Nick Frost (of those same films), a gang of seemingly forgotten stoner kids in a bad section of London find themselves fighting to survive when a bunch of aliens (who look much like bears with glowing eyes and teeth fall to Earth to populate the planet and take over. The kids have their own internal struggles, and we see that come out as the battle and drama unfolds. Decent action and gore, and a sense form the director about how much to show in order for it to not look fake makes this movie work. Comic relief from Frost (and the script in general) make it a fun ride. And because unlike Cowboys and Aliens we’re not familiar with any of the actors, we’ve no idea who will survive and who won’t. It makes the film all the more enjoyable, investing in characters without knowing their probably fate. I’d recommend both of these movies versus many others we’ve seen this year, but between the two, Attack the Block is my winner.
