Yes, yes, cowboys punching aliens in the face can be funny. But it doesn't make this silly endeavour worthwhile, says Peter Bradshaw
Many of us had to live through the dark, dark days of Wild, Wild West, Barry Sonnenfeld's mash-up retro-futurist Western from 1999. We flinched; we winced; we watched as the terrible Wild-West-plus-sci-fi idea crashed and burned spectacularly, and the pure wood performances of Kevin Kline and Will Smith went up in smoke.
A roughly similar nightmare has now arisen. Something that might have been frankly better left as a throwaway joke, or a doodle on an executive's notepad, has actually made it through the system as a full-length feature film, directed with a not-very-light touch by Jon Favreau.
In 1875, an escaped outlaw called Jake Lonergan, played by Daniel Craig with a perpetual, lemon-sucking facial expression, finds himself waking up in the middle of the desert with no memory,...
Many of us had to live through the dark, dark days of Wild, Wild West, Barry Sonnenfeld's mash-up retro-futurist Western from 1999. We flinched; we winced; we watched as the terrible Wild-West-plus-sci-fi idea crashed and burned spectacularly, and the pure wood performances of Kevin Kline and Will Smith went up in smoke.
A roughly similar nightmare has now arisen. Something that might have been frankly better left as a throwaway joke, or a doodle on an executive's notepad, has actually made it through the system as a full-length feature film, directed with a not-very-light touch by Jon Favreau.
In 1875, an escaped outlaw called Jake Lonergan, played by Daniel Craig with a perpetual, lemon-sucking facial expression, finds himself waking up in the middle of the desert with no memory,...
- 8/18/2011
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
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