The title promises a lot but really is barely an allusion to the genre blending madness that is present on the screen. Westerns and outer space science fiction are two genres of films that have barely ever been able to reside within the same story without being a complete mess of a movie. I’ve seen properties such as Cowboy Bebop and Serenity where they do it, but it’s more the spirit of the cowboy being transplanted into the futuristic space land that we want to be. We’ve never really seen John Wayne have to take a break from keeping the apaches at bay so that he can fight off aliens. If you’re asking yourself why no one had ever thought of doing that, it’s because it’s for good reason.

Jon Favreau is a director who resides on shaky ground. I liked to mock him for all of his lighter films, Elf and Zathura, but he’s become a geek favourite ever since the first Iron Man movie was released and has been riding the coat tails of that fame ever since by staying within the same PG-13 comic book genre of film that seems to finally be meeting its own level of mediocrity that every other genre has to deal with week to week.

This film wasn’t so much bad as it was the median effort any movie can give you. The strength of the film is that it’s a western, and fans of the genre have pretty much tunnel vision after being deprived for so many years of the classic tale of the cowboy who doesn’t like to play by anyone’s rules but his own. All the aspects of a regular western are there and are just as enjoyable, but eventually (actually really quickly) we have to deal with the odd addition of science fiction and that just muddies up the rest of the film.

Daniel Craig and Sam Rockwell do really well to fit into their roles in the film. Who sticks out like a sore thumb at every opportunity, unfortunately, is Harrison Ford. Ford finds a way to make everyone in the audience stop thinking about how amazing it would be to live in the wild west and wonder why Indiana Jones is in this movie. However, the best actor in the film is Paul Dano even if he’s only in the film for about fifteen minutes in total. Dano creates a sense of the western world faster than Craig is able to turn a fight to his advantage.

Favreau, as the patern is emerging, lets story sit sidesaddle following the slightly uninteresting action sequences that never feels important. There’s never a true sense of danger or wondering who’s going to live and who’s going to die. The cast is stacked high enough that we know who’s alien fodder and who’s the one that’s going to be hugging their loved ones just before the end credits roll.

Rating: 5.0/10