You must have heard about stories that somebody is kidnapped by aliens. But, do you know how? This is how: the aliens use a wire, probably stainless steel, and efficiently hook people up into the air, then carry them away. At least that is shown how it is done in the new sci-fi Western flick href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409847">"Cowboys and Aliens" (USA 2010 | 118 min.). Based on a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Cowboys_%26_Aliens_%28graphic_novel%29">comic novel, using mindless explosions and disgusting looking aliens, the film aims to offer a typical seasonal theatrical entertainment for young film goers to escape the sizzling summer heat.
Set in the Wild West in 1873, Jake Lonergan ( href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0185819/">Daniel Craig) is a most-wanted criminal. But when he wakes up from a coma with a high-tech bracelet on his wrist, he has no memory about his past nor where he is. That is because he just barely escapes from a kidnapping by creepy aliens. The aliens continue to snatch people up with metal wires, while bombing the villages like href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_Libya">NATO's airstrikes. Somehow, Jake figures out that he doesn't have to draw guns like a cowboy does. He can just extend his arm, and that bracelet from the 22nd century will blow up the aliens. Joined by a grumpy Colonel Dolarhyde ( href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000148/">Harrison Ford), and a beautiful Ella Swenson ( href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1312575/">Olivia Wilde), Jake is on a mission to reclaim the dessert back to humans from the aliens.
The film is a big pot of messy stew with all kinds of half-cooked ingredients that don't really complement each other. It's neither Western enough, nor sci-fi sufficient. Of course, the plot is not meant to make sense when the film is credited with href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409847/fullcredits#writers">eight writers. However, it surely makes you want to vomit everything you just ate when a gruesome href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Computer-generated_imagery">CGI alien jumps at you on the screen from nowhere, or when an alien opens its chest and extends out href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083866/">E.T.'s fingers. No, it's not cute.
Although the film lacks originality, imagination, and coherence, it doesn't seem to have trouble to become an instant blockbuster—that's the only purpose that everything of this film is designed to achieve, and it doesn't bother with anything else.
href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409847">"Cowboys and Aliens,"
a Universal Pictures release, opens on Friday, July 29, 2011 at href="http://www.imdb.com/showtimes/title/tt0409847/US/94104/">Bay Area theaters.
alt="Cowboys and Aliens" 
alt="Daniel Craig in Cowboys and Aliens"