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The Old West: Jake (Daniel Craig), a stranger with no memory but wearing a futuristic bracelet, drifts into town, and when he stands up to local bully Percy Dolarhyde (Paul Dano), he earns the respect of the citizens - even if the sheriff (Keith Carradine) has to arrest both him and Percy in the process - much to the dismay of old man Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), the richest man in town and father to Percy of course. But before he can even make an attempt to free his son, alien spaceships attack that pretty much fish for locals to abduct in the busy streets. Of course, human weapons are useless against these ships, only Jake's bracelet works ...

After the attack, Jake, Dolarhyde and a mysterious woman called Ella (Olivia Wilde) who is of course to become Jake's main squeeze before long, are quick to organize a search party - but further alien attacks as well as an attack by Jake's former gang, decimate the posse pretty much constantly, even Ella is killed. But then our heroes are surrounded by Apaches, who at first take them captive, but when Ella returns from the dead - you see, she's actually a shape-shifting alien trying to protect humankind from those other aliens -, she manages to persuade the Apaches to join the posse and attack the aliens, and she shows Jake, who apparently has been abducted by the aliens but managed to escape, how to use his bracelet to track down the alien mothership - which is on earth to mine gold no less.

So ultimately, our motley crew attacks the ship both from the inside and the outside, but thing is, the aliens are pretty strong and pretty near invulnerable, and they don't really enjoy interference and have no reservations killing a few of these pesky humans ...

Now while the idea to blend science fiction and western was by no means a new one - see 1935's The Phantom Empire for example -, it was still pretty novel in 2011 ... and this film makes the least of it, really, in fact it feels completely generic, just using genre mainstays without the least of panache. And the story that's just bluntly straightforward and peopled by hollow characters doesn't really help to make this more than a dull science fiction action flick in cowboy hats, and the total lack of the "fun"-feeling the title suggests isn't a plus either. At least the acting's quite alright, and the thing's well-paced, so the film's not a complete trainwreck - it's just not very good, and it totally fails to deliver on its promise.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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