BEFORE: Well, I can finally stop tracking Bond's travels, conquests and gadgets and get back to some good ol' American sci-fi. Obviously I planned this as the link so Daniel Craig could carry over from "Skyfall". I'll have to review some cast lists tonight to figure out the next link in the chain.
THE PLOT: A spaceship arrives in Arizona, 1873, to take over the Earth, starting with the Wild West region. A posse of cowboys and natives are all that stand in their way.
AFTER: You know that a film was groundbreaking when it triggers a bunch of knock-off films - and I don't mean a bunch of spoofs like "Titanic" had - I mean films like "King Kong", "Star Wars" "Armageddon", or in this case "Independence Day". You just know that for years after, pitch meetings would all reference that film, like "Independence Day in the Future" ("Battlefield Earth") or "Independence Day in South Africa" ("District 9") or "Independence Day in Los Angeles" ("Battle: Los Angeles").
Tonight's film happens to be based on a comic book, but I can't help but think that it got green-lit with the phrase "Independence Day in the Old West". Because that's what it is. A group of technologically backwards cowboys and Native Americans have to band together against impossible odds to stop the invasion of Earth.
It raises some interesting questions, about how someone who doesn't know what a rocket is, let alone a flying alien craft, or an energy blaster might react upon seeing one. Would they immediately recognize these things for what they are? Up until then, they'd only seen birds flying, and without electricity it's tough to envision what a laser might be. If you took someone from the 1800's into the present day, would they just have trouble understanding TV and microwaves, or would they be texting on a smart phone within a week?
You could also think of this as the film in which James Bond and Indiana Jones team up to fight aliens, and if you want to go that way, I'm not inclined to stop you. But there are other characters too, and seeing bigoted ranchers working with Native Americans against a common enemy is a nice touch, though a bit obvious in its modern P.C. loftiness.
The effects are fine, but the plot's a little cookie-cutter. If you found you couldn't watch the last quarter of the film for some reason, I bet you could take a pretty good guess about how it all plays out. In fact, some of the people the aliens abducted even seem better off than they were before, since the experience managed to smooth out the rougher parts of their behavior.
Also starring Harrison Ford (last seen in "The Devil's Own"), Olivia Wilde (last seen in "Tron: Legacy"), Sam Rockwell (last seen in "The Sitter"), Keith Carradine, Clancy Brown (last heard in "Green Lantern"), Adam Beach (last seen in "Windtalkers"), Paul Dano (last seen in "Taking Lives"), Walton Goggins (last seen in "The Next Karate Kid"), Noah Ringer.
RATING: 6 out of 10 Wanted posters
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