I had to look up the status of the Dark Tower film (based on Stephen King's series of books) after watching Cowboys & Aliens; Daniel Craig would make a great Roland Deschain. Turns out--and I think I knew this already, but forgot--Javier Bardem is playing him. Really, if we got a string of westerns coming up (though I don't think we do), they wouldn't do wrong to cast both Craig and Harrison Ford. They've both got good western faces, like Eastwood does (and did way back when). Anyway, both men not only look the part for a western but do great service to a film that despite its blatantly non-western premise plays out almost entirely like a western would. Favreau doesn't direct the film like a science fiction story but like a straight western in which the villains just happen to have flying ships, look like monsters, and are called "demons."
That is perhaps the best thing about Cowboys & Aliens, that it plays out as a Western, and doesn't play anything tongue-in-cheek, winking at the audience for knowing exactly what the cowboys are facing here... although, on that note, the film probably should have played up the fear levels a bit. Sure, the preacher calls them "demons" but no one really spends any time dealing realistically dealing with the notion of a) demons actually existing or b) flying things abducting townspeople. Then again, the tone fits with what would probably be in a classic western in which, instead of aliens, Indians are kidnapping people. Still, the film is far better than its graphic novel base deserves. I hated that book when I read it a few years back, not just because it stalled my own mini comic with the same title, but also because it was so poorly written, badly drawn. The film actually has some depth to it, taking its time to draw some 3-dimensional characters--side note, even Noah Ringer does pretty well as the sole child character... I only recently got around to seeing Shyamalan's The Last Airbender, which was a horrid, badly put together thing, and Ringer's Aang couldn't emote a bit. He wasn't an actor when he was cast for that film, but he's almost one now.
The rest of the cast is good, though Olivia Wilde's character, prior to--SPOILERS AHEAD--her burning, could have been played a little less overtly mysterious and peculiar. Another actress could've probably done the job better, but Wilde was serviceable. The various minor roles, Sam Rockwell, Adam Beach, Walton Goggins, Clancy Brown, Paul Dano, Keith Carradine (those last three in fairly small, but important roles), are all well done. All in all, the film works on more levels than one might expect given its appearance as a simplistic summer effects-heavy blockbuster. I think, for this year alone, we've already had a better western film in Rango, but Cowboys & Aliens works well as a western and works ok as a science fiction piece. Favreau knows what he's doing.
Backing up a bit, one of last summer's movies, The Last Airbender, continues the trend of Shyamalan's films getting increasingly bad as they go along. Important note, The Happening is still entertainingly bad, while Lady in the Water is offensively bad, so those two could be switched on the list rating how bad Shyamalan's films are. The Last Airbender is not entertaining, is not well acted, is poorly written, makes changes to its source that, minor (some pronunciation issues) and major (Aang never gets to full-on Avatar mode, destructive giant), serve no good purpose, and wastes some pretty good visual effects and guarantees there will be no good film adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender... unless someone pulls a Hulk and remakes this thing before anyone lets Shyamalan try a sequel. Meanwhile, the three seasons of the series are available on Netflix Instant and the new series, Legend of Korra, had a panel at Comic Con and looks to be airing sometime next year. Perhaps we can just put Shyamalan's version behind us and pretend it doesn't exist.
Visual Effects are getting cheap enough that bad movies like Shyamalan's The Last Airbender can have great ones and still be filmic shit. The Effects in Cowboys & Aliens are great in the darker scenes, a little lacking a few times in the daylight shots, but overall pretty good. Captain America also makes use of some great visual effects, including a rather unique effect, making Chris Evans look scrawny for his pre-Captain scenes. This effect has a few notable weak points, making his head and body look a little disconnected in certain shots and lighting. But, overall, the visual is a success. The color timing of the film, a little stylized for the World War II-era stuff, covers what probably wouldn't have worked as well in a realistically-colored sequence. Plenty of other stuff in this film has to be visual effects but doesn't come across as such--the Exposition, the various Hydra bases (though, obviously, parts of those were practical sets).
The acting in Captain America is good, and the film is a lot of fun (like the first Iron Man was and like Thor should have been more), getting plenty of humor in. I was never much of a reader of Captain America, and I'm not very familiar with Red Skull as a character or the various Howling Commandos (who were associated, apparently, with Nick Fury, not Steve Rogers, but the Marvel films can get away with Steve Rogers being frozen and coming back, as he's got the super soldier serum in his system, but Fury is a harder sell for being World War II-era, so the change is understandable). The various commandos, seem designed specifically for the comic nerds who will identify each of them individually, but the film really doesn't give any depth to them or spend much time with them, except as background to Captain America. The montage of the lot of them taking out various Hydra bases has little important content to it and almost comes across as a setup for a video game or a spinoff tv series or something more than an important part of this story.
Bucky gets a little more time than the Commandos, but I've already seen complaints--SPOILERS AHEAD--about his death not having the right tone for such a major character... Of course, when briefly I did follow Captain America, it was long after Bucky was a character, so again, I am not familiar with him. The film, I think, sets him up well enough before going to war, and brings him back fine enough. Inappropriately, as it turns out, when Rogers finds him in the Hydra base, and he's on what looks to be a lab table, I thought he was going to be turned bad as one of Red Skull's experimental soldiers or something (which would probably be a far cry from who Bucky was in Captain America history), but then that wasn't the case. He was not in the cells with the other soldiers because, well, he just wasn't. He does have a good moment just before his death, when he uses Captain America's shield.
Tommy Lee Jones and Stanley Tucci do well with their parts. Despite the importance of her role, Hayley Atwell's Agent Carter is such a one-note character that it's hard to judge how well she does with it. While Tucci's scientist role allows for a bit of depth, his counterpart Toby Jones is never given much to do but toady up to Red Skull. As for Red Skull, Hugo Weaving is wasted on a role that really doesn't even give him much to do, not even any good mustache-twirling (which would have been fitting the tone of the film, actually)... though, of course, Red Skull has no mustache. Dominic Cooper's Howard Stark does have a mustache, and he also has a meatier role (though not so important to the plot), and Cooper does a good job of creating a character related to Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark, where one could understand the two being father and son even though they aren't in a film together.
The film sets up for The Avengers next year, though the framing sequence has little weight to the film as a whole. When--MINOR SPOILER--Rogers learns how much time has passed, and he simply laments that he had a date, I almost wished Agent Carter would be back as an old woman, they'd get to dance, and while cheesy, their relationship would have had a nice coda (which also would have put more weight on Atwell's role). At this point, the Marvel films are so deliberately tying together in the lead up to The Avengers that it wasn't even surprising that the after-the-credits bit was not a scene but a trailer. So, the framing sequence here is important (and it's important, of course, to know that Captain America isn't dead), but the cut to Rogers waking up in the fake 1940s room seems like a lazy transition for something that could have been far more dramatic, showing them actually get him out of the ice.
All in all, Cowboys & Aliens and Captain America were a good double feature. The former took itself serious enough to work, and the latter had fun enough with its setting to work. I'm not sure either one will be winning any awards, but they do what they need to do as big summer movies, and sometimes that is plenty.
