BLU-RAY REVIEW: COWBOYS & ALIENS

Great review Nick, bang on the money. Cowboys and Aliens was probably my biggest disappointment of the year because its individual elements should've meant a slam-dunk, but instead resulted in a confused mess. Inconsistent characterization, terrible climax ('Let's all run down a corridor one at a time and get shot by Daniel Craig!') and grating tonal shifts gave the impression that nobody had a clue what the fuck this movie was meant to be (Or at least, was incessantly meddled with by a studio who had no idea what they actually wanted).

It's interesting in a way; common wisdom tends to dictate that it's best to deal with such arch pulpy material with a straight face, but C&A is IMO an example of how you can take it a little too seriously. I don't know whether it was THAT flashback completely altering my perception of the film as a whole, but I remember it being just a dour fucking movie in a way that didn't provide a counterpoint to the pulpy premise, but felt shoehorned in. I remember that Brown and Rockwell were funny and that Ford had a few moments, but I can't remember what it was they actually did and said that was funny; the film just exists in my mind as a kind of sullen blur with occasional outbursts of vioence and horror that felt like they belonged to a different movie.