I do love a nice genre mash-up (I’m writing one myself). The title of this film, based on the graphic novel, is maybe a bit too on the nose, but hey, at least I know what I’m walking into. Daniel Craig’s character wakes up in the middle of the West. No idea who he is, how he got there, or what this crazy gadget is that’s attached to his wrist. For a while, we’re piecing together who he may have been as he (re-)enters a town he’s clearly been to before. But then, something happens. Lights in the sky, and then BAM, people are being attacked/abducted by alien spacecraft.
One of the fun things in a genre mash-up is seeing how the characters from one genre react to elements from another. Cowboys in the old west had no concept for picturing flying machines from outer space. They think they’re flying demons, which Craig can fight with that “iron bracelet arm gun”. It’s these parts that are fascinating to me in criss-crossing genres, and worth exploring.
This film, however, tends to play it safe, and after it while it’s just like any other tentpole action film: you just feel it “delivering”. Director Jon Favreau (of the Ironman films) makes it look good, keeps that trademark wit intact and ramps it up properly when it needs to be. But despite the hopeful start, the five screenwriters (yikes!) fell into the rather expected benchmarks that these kind of films hit. Hero has a past he longs to remember, clues here and there provide little twists, encounters with aliens become bigger and more set-pieceier, etc… It’s a fun concept, so filled with new potential, but the film just fell into the square-shaped hole that so many before it easily slide through.
