![]() ![]() "True Grit," " Appaloosa" and " 3:10 to Yuma" were good, but limited in their demographic appeal. The last one kids liked was " Rango," an animated cartoon. We are told, however, that the Western is a dead genre. Sam Rockwell's Doc is the kind of small businessman who has come West while seeking his fortune among hard men. ![]() Harrison Ford, as the rancher, embodies the kind of man who comes riding into town at the head of his private posse and issues orders to everyone. Daniel Craig, cold-eyed and lean, plays a character familiar in the genre think of the Ringo Kid or Doc Holliday, bad guys who rise to goodness. You know, the old-fashioned kind, without spaceships. The acting from the large cast is of a high standard, Craig and Ford were more or less born into their roles, and director Jon Favreau actually develops his characters and gives them things to do, instead of posing them in front of special effects. As preposterous moneymakers go, it's ambitious and well-made. The movie will no doubt be popular and deserves success. It's almost too good to be true to learn, via a trade review, that this movie was inspired not by a comic book but by its cover. I call these monsters bug-eyed not to be unkind but to trace their lineage back to the mother lode of BEMs on the covers of such pulp mags as Thrilling Wonder Stories. Their other purpose in journeying unimaginable distances across the void is to use mysterious forces to suck up gold - coins, watches, rings, whatever. But mostly they strafe the town, drop explosive charges behind characters but rarely upon them and reel up human victims into their smaller flying ships in order (need we be told) to study them. Oh, they arrive in a spaceship that's taller than a skyscraper, and they must have designed it. The aliens, as usual, show limited signs of intelligence. Daniel Craig plays Lonergan, the stagecoach killer, Harrison Ford plays the not enigmatically named Woodrow Dolarhyde, and Keith Carradine is Sheriff Taggart, who has his work cut out for him. Humanity is in danger, and it's up to the rough-hewn cowboys of the Old West to save us. ![]()
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