'Cowboys & Aliens': Beam 'em up, pardner

If the title of "Cowboys & Aliens" strikes you as some kind of joke, you're not alone. This comic-book movie is co-written by Steve Oedekerk ("Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls") and the director is Jon Favreau, who handled "Elf" before "Iron Man." Early trailers reportedly baffled audiences: We're supposed to take this seriously?

That's right, pilgrims. A rip-roaring blast, "Cowboys & Aliens" succeeds precisely because it fuses the preposterous and the authentic. Even as giant spaceships shoot blue lasers, you can feel the dust and grit of 1875 New Mexico. It's a whole-hog hybrid that thrillingly immerses you in two vivid worlds at once.

The action starts as Jake Lonergan (a sunbaked Daniel Craig) wakes up in the chaparral wearing an iron bracelet but missing his memory. After wandering into nearby Absolution, Jake learns he's wanted for murder. Perhaps worse, he also stole a pile of gold from the ruthless cattleman Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford, returning to rugged form after a string of soft roles).

Jaws are clenched for a showdown until, in the first of several tremendous action sequences, alien warships begin ripping through clapboard and snatching townsfolk. (Jake's manacle helpfully lights up -- it's a weapon!) Now facing bigger enemies, Jake and Dolarhyde go alien-hunting together through the open West (classily filmed by cinematographer Matthew Libatique). Tagging along is a mysterious beauty, Ella (Olivia Wilde).

Tightly paced and filled with fun details (people aren't beamed upward but lassoed), "Cowboys & Aliens" fully embraces every cliche. We'll meet the preacher-doctor (Clancy Brown) and the loyal Apache (Adam Beach), just as surely as we'll stare into a gargling alien's guts. Ridiculous, you say? Most assuredly. But when it comes to pure entertainment, this movie isn't kidding around.

Back story: How the West can be won again

"Cowboys & Aliens" attempts to merge two genres that are essentially strangers to each other, the Western and the sci-fi adventure. But the film's director, Jon Favreau, has another goal as well: He hopes his picture will boost the Western's once-thriving, more recently sagging, fortunes.

"Westerns have been considered box-office poison in recent years," Favreau said by telephone recently. "But alien-invasion movies have been very popular, so the hope is that fusing the two genres allows us to make something that has more of a commercial upside than a traditional Western, while also allowing us to embrace the traditional aspects of the Western.

"I think it's irresponsible to embrace the themes of the early Westerns," maintained Favreau, 44, whose best-known credits include directing the two "Iron Man" films. "Native Americans seemed like a mysterious force of evil back then, but now we see them as a sympathetic group disadvantaged by technology. Even as I was growing up, you couldn't root against the Indians -- they were seen as heroic.

"Having aliens allowed us to embrace all the Western traditions that had been set aside," Favreau said. "You now have an unconflicted, unsympathetic, remorseless enemy. That was the tradition of the old Westerns."

-- Washington Post