The Movie
A cowboy (Daniel Craig) wakes up on the prairie bloody, barefoot and confused, with a mysterious contraption on his wrist. He's not sure what he's doing there or even who he is, but he does have skills that come in handy in the old west, quick with his fists and with a gun.
Trouble follows him to a nearby mining-turned-cattle town, where an angry rancher (Harrison Ford) wants to settle an old score. But before justice can be served, UFOs attack, weapons blasting and townsfolk being snatched right off the street. Naturally, a posse forms to pursue the marauding aliens and rescue the missing kin.
Adapted from a lesser-known comic book of the same name, Cowboys & Aliens contains a lot of compelling images and promising ideas, but despite star power on both sides of the camera, it never adds up to anything special. It has clearly been influenced by many other movies, all of them better than this. We learn in the extras that two of the main reasons this movie was made were that the title was catchy, and that a bunch of different people all wanted to make a western. In Hollywood, that means "throw in some explosions and you can have a $163M budget!" Despite multiple names credited, apparently only a miniscule fraction of that figure went toward the script.
The Blu-ray allows us to choose between the PG-13 theatrical cut (default) and a significantly longer unrated version.
Saddle up that mouse and mosey on over to Joe Lozito's review of Cowboys & Aliens, partner.
The Picture
The 2.4:1 movie is awash in earthy brown tones that convincingly portray the subdued look of the cinematic west. Even the alien scenarios do not feature particularly bold colors. The image is mostly stable despite ample smoke and dust, the lovely unspoiled vistas and the pricey digital ILM effects reproducing quite well, but there are a great many dark scenes, nighttime and interiors, and the blacks are too often harsh, hazy and unnatural. This is a mega-budget tentpole flick, it really should look better than this in HD.
The Sound
I noted a pleasing detail and spaciousness in the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix, with clean trebles in particular. All of the shooting--be it Colt, Remington or raygun--along with the soaring spacecraft display a sharp directionality across the soundfield. Discrete surrounds are extremely active in this mix, in addition to an enjoyable rear-channel fill for the interesting environments. Hoofbeats bring the expected thunder.
The Extras
In addition to full running audio commentary by director Jon Favreau, both cuts of the movie offer intermittent picture-in-picture, typically pertinent video interviews with cast and crew. Additionally, there are six casual-but-insightful discussions between Jon and his fellow filmmakers that harken back to his Dinner for Five days, over an hour all together but curiously in standard definition. The five-part "Igniting the Sky: The Making of Cowboys & Aliens" (40 minutes, HD) handily broaches all of the usual topics.
The disc supports BD-Live as well as the pocket BLU suite of enhanced features, now with both Universal's Second Screen and the new Flick View which allows us shift content from a connected tablet to the television using the touchscreen.
Disc Two is a DVD with the movie and three of the chapters of the "making of," plus the commentary. This edition also appears to support both traditional Digital Copy download via a unique printed code as well the new Cloud-based Ultra Violet Digital Copy.
Final Thoughts
An unusual and not entirely successful mashup of two disparate genres, Cowboys & Aliens is often corny, surprisingly dull and ultimately unsatisfying. Devotees of stars Ford and Craig might want to check it out, but even as reference material this disc misses the mark.
Product Details
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