He reaches for a bloody wound at his side and discovers a strange manacle cuffed to his wrist and a lovely stranger’s tintype photograph lying in the dust at his feet - and so begins the mystery of how this loner will come to save humankind from a battalion of unidentified, unfriendly and most unwelcome flying objects.Īfter the muddled “Iron Man 2,” this feels like a return to a more patient, more coherent storytelling style for Favreau, who finds imaginative ways to introduce each character before bringing on the alien mayhem. “ Cowboys & Aliens” begins like a 19th-century Bourne movie, with Daniel Craig playing a stone-cold killer who wakes up in the middle of the New Mexico desert, his memory a blank. (Besides, what was “ Raiders of the Lost Ark,” if not a prototype for such a B-movie mash-up?) Abrams and Michael Bay), Favreau has emerged the most immediate heir to the master’s heartfelt showmanship. Still, of all the directors to work in exec producer Steven Spielberg’s shadow (including J.J.
#Cowboys and aliens wrist blaster series#
A quick tour through Favreau’s credits reveals a helmer who has managed to spin hearty entertainment from ever more anemic sources - first a bedtime story (“Zathura”), then a comicbook series (“Iron Man”), and now a mere illustration, intended to be the cover of a then-unpublished graphic novel.