COWBOYS AND ALIENS

Director: Jon Favreau

Starring: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde

IT’S A storyline that shouldn’t really work - combining cowboys and aliens.

But it does and pretty well, too.

Having Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford on board helps enormously as both men have an amazing screen prescence.

As with many of this year’s blockbuster movies, this is based on a comic book, though not a particularly well known one.

The story sees Jake Lonergan (Craig) wake up in the middle of Arizona in 1873. He can’t remember a thing, though.

After making his way to the nearest town he meets the local bigwig Woodrow Dolarhyde (Ford) in what up until then is a pretty straightforward western.

However, the action takes a completely different turn as we suddenly have spacecraft whisking people away with metal lassoos and blowing up buildings.

Into the fray comes a mysterious woman (Wilde) and we are all set for cowboys and indians v aliens.

The aliens are very good and in fact all the futuristic aspects, weapons, spacecraft etc, are very impressive.

Some areas of the plot are rather obvious and flagged up well in advance but overall this is entertaining enough to keep you rooted to your seat for a couple of hours.

Sam Rockwell as Doc and Keith Carridine as the sheriff add weight to the casting.

After a mixed year of sci-fi alien movies with some good (Monsters, Paul, Attack the Block) and some pretty bad ones (Skyline, Battle Los Angeles) it’s always good to welcome another decent one into the fold.

four out of five stars

Steve Payne

Screening courtesy Cineworld Crawley