Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wakes up with no memory of who he is.  Or what has happened to him.  After an altercation with some outlaws, he makes his way to a saloon.  Outside, he hears Percy Dolarhyde (Paul Dano) giving a shopkeeper a hard time and intervenes.  During the confrontation, Percy shoots a federal deputy, causing him to be arrested.

While waiting for the federal agents to pick up Percy, his father, Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), learns of the arrest.  Woodrow runs the town with an iron fist, though not officially.  He is feared by all.  Woodrow heads to town to stop the sheriff from having his son moved to federal custody.

It is during this standoff that something other-worldly happens.  Alien spaceships attack the town, capturing the townsfolk and carting them off to an unknown destination.  The only defense against the onslaught lies in the mysterious bracelet on Jake’s wrist.

Jake, Woodrow and his gang, and several of the townspeople head off to find the whereabouts of their family and friends and try to stop the aliens from continuing their assault.

This is a guys’ film.  It takes the Old West and pits it against an alien invasion.  It definitely gets high marks for originality.  If you can find this storyline previously used in any movie, please, let me know.

Obviously, there’s a lot of action.  And it’s pretty well done.  The special effects aren’t bad either, though there’s nothing groundbreaking or earth-shattering.  There is a fair amount of comedy thrown in, just to mix it up a little.  Would you expect anything less from a movie about cowboys fighting aliens?

Cowboys & Aliens is what the latest Indiana Jones should have been, if they wanted to include aliens.  Daniel Craig even loses hat on the way out and stops to pick it up.  A very Indiana Jones move.  It’s almost as if they were giving a nod to that franchise.  Or throwing it in their face that they found a way to pit Harrison Ford against invading aliens outside of Star Wars.

That said, it’s a decent movie.  It isn’t the best movie I’ve ever seen.  But it’s definitely not the worst.  I don’t even regret the $4.50 I dropped at the RedBox (because I couldn’t get around to watching it for a few days).  If you’ve got an hour and a half to kill, and you’re all caught up on your DVRed shows, pick it up.  You can probably even convince your significant other to sit through it.