Western with a difference

THE good old Western may not be very much in favour with modern day audiences-True Grit and 3.10 To Yuma apart- but the opportunity is there to catch up with Cowboys and Aliens, with a storyline as preposterous as the come, but yet enjoyable. What we get are cowboys, apaches, a stagecoach robber, bandits and strange characters, but also scary looking aliens with little intelligence who arrive in a spaceship larger than most skyscrapers, and reel in humans to study them.

The film, which has marvellous special effects, is set in sparsely populated New Mexico in 1875, and opens with Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) waking up in the middle of nowhere, with no memory of who he is or how he landed there.
Stuck to his wrist is a strange metal bracelet, built of technology unknown to him. Three rowdies show up and warn him that it is not going to be his lucky day- but they’re wrong.
Jakes moves off to the sleepy townland of Absolution, where he becomes involved in a fight with the town’s shoot em-up bully, Percy (Paul Dano), and for his troubles, is landed behind bars by Sheriff Taggart (Keith Carradine).
Just as they’re about to leave for the Federal court, Percy’s Dad Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) shows up and, more dramatically, so do alien spacecraft out of the gloom, intent on lassoing and kidnapping the natives.