Krishna
Let us face it. The title should have warned me off. I decided to see it anyway. You assume that whatever the title, a movie that has both Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig ought to be good, if not great, right?
Wrong.
Come on, even ‘Snakes on the Plane’ was a stupid title but the movie worked at a comic level, so this should be viewed as comedy, and then it is kind of funny, right?
Wrong again.
Even discounting Daniel Craig, just having Harrison Ford should have been enough. Now, there is an actor who chooses his roles with care, and can, on occasion, carry an otherwise mediocre movie on his shoulders and elevate it to an ‘interesting movie’ level. Even he cannot save this mess.
As an aside, his latest role in “42” is a surprise, and I am told it works very well. Proof again of his normal intuitiveness in choosing roles and movies. For a carpenter in the sets who wandered into the movies via Star Wars series, it is a great achievement!
Back to ‘our’ movie. The movie starts with Daniel Craig waking up alone in a desert, with a weird looking bracelet on his arm and no other papers, and his memory totally gone. He does not know who he is, or how he got there.
It is the Wild West and he wanders into a loner town into a bar (really) and stands up to a bully when he is identified as a wanted outlaw Jake. The bully, unfortunately, is the son of an evil man who rules that town, Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) and he seeks revenge. Just as these two main heroes are about to face off, the aliens come in and attack them.
From there the movie rapidly goes downhill with alien hunting and implausible themes and all kinds of ridiculous crap. The explanation for Jake waking up with the bracelet, which is a deadly weapon against huge animatronic machines of the aliens is this. (Consider this a sample of what the film logic is).
Jake was abducted, and while in the ship, one of the alien (doctor I guess) left his bracelet conveniently by the side of the gurney where Jake was lying unconscious and then left the room, without any other guard or other supervision. Jake woke up and accidentally let his hand drop and his hand dropped exactly on the bracelet, which obligingly snapped shut, snug against his wrists. Easy to explain, right?
Needless to say, the two heroes team up against the greater menace and come to respect each other.
Don’t waste your time going to this movie, there is nothing in there to see.
Let us say, a generous 2/10
— Krishna