skymovies

Somewhere out West. Man (Craig) wakes up in the desert, bleeding. Weird metal manacle on his wrist. Doesn't know who he is. Doesn't know how he got there. Kills some passing lowlifes. Rides to the nearest town: Absolution.

Ordinary kinda place. Usual kinda folks: kindly preacher (Clancy Brown), fretful barkeep-cum-doctor (Sam Rockwell), dog-tired sheriff (Keith Carradine), purty mystery lady Ella (Olivia Wilde), young troublemaker (Paul Dano).

Turns out the latter boy's untouchable, bein' son of local bigwig Dolarhyde (Ford) an' all. Figures he can push the stranger around. Figures wrong. Turns out it's Jake Lonergan - a bigger villain than old man Dolarhyde.

So just another day in Absolution. Til nightfall that is, when a bunch of machines swoop down from the sky, blow the town to smithereens and make off with half the people usin' some kinda fancy lassoes.

Aliens. Doggone.

Only thing that'll stop 'em is Jake's fancy wrist cannon. So if they want their folks back, everybody's gonna have to put their differences aside and posse up to track them unidentified flying varmints down.

Along the way, Jake gradually gets his memory back. Runs into his old gang too. And some Apaches.

Also finds out what mysterious Ella's all about and what the ETs want (same thing as everyone else, truth be told).

It's all based on one o' them graphic novels. But with a tale as outlandish as this, it proves a wise move to play it straight. Mostly.

Course, there's a gutful of guffaws to be had, but it all pans out like 3:10 to The Alamo. With more alien splatting.

Director Favreau has great fun with his flashbacks and dandy effects and such. Even throws in a few sly nods to the genre, yessiree.

But what he needs is a manly, clenched jaw or two to carry it off. And what he gets in Craig and Ford. That's what they do.

The set-up's terrific. Pacing's a mite skew-whiff though. The search and rescue bit kinda drags. Favreau needs to put his spurs in more often. Bringing the sheriff's grandkid along don't speed things along none either. Coulda made more use of the dog too.

It ain't free o' clichés. But then what western is? Want a mash-up that does what it says it's gonna do? Saddle up.

It's Aliens meet The Vikings! Beowulf meets Predator! Er... Final Fantasy meets The 13th Warrior? How about Braveheart goes Jabberwocky? Whichever way you cut it, the concept is far more interesting than the end product; a derivative adventure of epic mediocrity boasting three-star effects, two-star execution and a one-star script.

In a riot of straight-faced silliness, it pitches erstwhile Jesus Jim Caviezel as another saviour - this time as a chap from another planet who falls to Earth in 709AD to unite two warring Norse tribes against a bloodthirsty alien beastie.

On one side we have John Hurt at his craggiest as wise King Rothgar (not bearing any similarity to King Hrothgar of Beowulf at all, oh no); on the other we have Ron Perlman's bad-tempered, beardy baldie Gunnar. In between we have Sophia Myles as Rothgar's spunky daughter and Jack Huston as her would-be suitor, the impetuous Wulfric.

Huston descends from a legendary Hollywood clan but his talent doesn't go much beyond flaring his nostrils and playing second fiddle to steely-eyed Caviezel - he resembles Russell Brand after discovering he's been chatting up a tougher, much better-looking bloke's girlfriend.

There's plenty of mead-swilling, hearty cheering and gratuitous gore, most memorably when Myles finds herself in the creature's lair atop a mountain of half-eaten villagers.

But it's no better than the sort of schedule filler you can see any night on the SciFi Channel. It could have been a cult classic but anything saddled with a plot this unimaginative rightfully belongs in an XBox, not a multiplex.

Aw come on people, there's a lot worse than this out there. So it makes Krull look like Lord of the Rings, features Ray Liotta's most embarrassing performance (Liberace in a leather trenchcoat) and looks like it's been edited by a 5-year-old with ADHD, but there are at least two decent special effects amongst all the rubber masks and polystyrene boulders.

As my first Uwe Boll experience, I was disappointed by its near-competence. Sure, we're not dealing with a prodigious talent here, but Boll must be doing something right to assemble such a recognisable cast. Who else would think to produce an Arthurian pantomime with Hellboy, The Transporter, the Bandit, Gimli the dwarf, Shaggy from Scooby Doo, Hallam Foe's mum, one of the GoodFellas and a Terminator? A triumph of enthusiasm over ability, it has all the traditional fantasy ingredients: reluctant yet vengeful hero, damsel in distress, evil sorceror, good sorceror, world-weary king, cowardly duke, orc-like hordes, and even throws in a boomerang and a few babes in the wood for good measure.

Unfortunately, it's all dungeons without dragons and lords without rings. In the event, Boll overcooks and overcuts the whole caboodle to make it seem more exciting than it really is. But you have to admire him for playing it so straight.

One question: is Statham's character called Farmer because of what he does or because his brow looks like a ploughed field?