Set in the old West desert town of Absolution, Cowboys & Aliens has almost everything you'd expect to see in a classic Western: gunslingers, shoot-outs, saloons ... and aliens.
Just think of it as gourmet comfort food.
"Hopefully it's a really, really smart version of a very simplistic concept," actor-turned-director Jon Favreau tells NPR's Mary Louise Kelly.
As a director, Favreau is best known for his Iron Man mega-hits, but he says he was cautious not to let his latest film devolve into a sci-fi action popcorn movie.
"The trick is to discipline it so that the scale of the film remains a Western all the way through," he says. "Make it feel like a Western, don't immediately turn it into Independence Day."
Before they can settle their score, however, the other half of the movie's title -- the aliens -- finally figure into things, laying siege to Absolution in a midnight raid and carrying away a number of its residents.
Favreau has proven before that he can direct action sequences, and he does it again here, with a scene that is intense, prolonged and just plain big. The problem is that it takes so dadgum long to happen. We all know aliens will come into play -- it's right there in the title -- but Favreau insists on playing it coy, teasing us with the pretend mystery of what's in store for unsuspecting Absolution.
It takes a shade over 30 minutes before the aliens finally make their entrance, and even then we only see their shiny, trilobite-like ships. Another 15 minutes are wasted before we actually see one of the creatures.
That "make-'em-wait" conceit worked in Spielberg's "Jaws." Here, though, it's so self-consciously done that it feels as if Favreau is simply killing time, sacrificing story for the sake of his big reveal.
In between, there's a lot of chatting, a lot of attempted one-liners, a lot of Craig's character piecing together his past, as the human characters -- friend and foe alike -- band together to rescue their loved ones and defend their dusty little corner of the universe.
They end result is a genre mashup that does a decent job of serving both genres -- sci-fi and Western -- but one that doesn't really excel at either.
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