With the rich history of films that boldly stretch the boundaries of the classic American western film — from Sergio Leone's lens reinterpreting the genre from a European perspective to Mel Brooks lovingly lampooning it — one could easily buy how Favreau's inventive mind would milk the colliding concepts of COWBOYS & ALIENS for all that it's worth and then some. Just on the surface, it's easy to see why he and high profile producing partners Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard would snatch up this full-gallop fun idea and run wild with it. After all, Favreau was the director who powered up a "nowhere" Marvel property like IRON MAN, lit a fire under its hyper-alloy kettle by casting Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, and blew the lid off box offices around the world. John Wayne versus Space Monsters should have been a slam dunk. Yet apparently abducting the pistols-against-lasers concept from Scott Mitchell Rosenberg's comic book yarn was a feat the filmmakers never quite got past, and so this flying spaghetti western falls more than a bit flat in its earnest but uninspired adventure.

It's undeniable that audiences will be drawn to stars Craig and Ford who do their rather timeworn characters justice, delivering genuine moments of humor, pathos and enjoyable quirks of individuality which season the bland, often predictable plot. Craig's Lonergan is a man of mystery, awakening on a dusty flatland with a strange wound in his side and a bizarre bracelet forged around his wrist. His opening scene confronting three strangers who mean him harm deftly demonstrates that Lonergan is not a man to be trifled with, even if he can't yet recall his own name or how he got there. Fans of Daniel's work from his two Bond films should revisit his earlier effort LAYER CAKE to glimpse his solid acting chops sans the big-budget trappings, and they will easily see how the actor fills in the character gaps and holds audience attention while he remains an enigmatic cipher. Ford's gruff, cantankerous Woodrow Dolarhyde could be Indy Jones' wild west grandfather, although he uses the darker side of this Colonel's personality to differentiate western cattle baron from jungle adventurer. Co-star Olivia Wilde doesn't quite enjoy the same good break with her mysterious character, Ella, who is saddled with a large burden of exposition in the story. Still Wilde delivers in her role far beyond her obvious physical appeal and creates as much on-screen chemistry as her character and the plot allow.

A solid supporting cast aids their cause to battle the aliens and reclaim their abducted loved ones, with Sam Rockwell's bespectacled barman Doc and Keith Carradine's laconic Sheriff Taggart topping the list. Rockwell has certainly enjoyed better dramatic and comic roles (witness his hilarious turn as Stark's corporate competition in IRON MAN 2), but his natural gift for improv seems roped in by plot demands here and viewers may find themselves urging him to break free a bit. Meanwhile Carradine reminds us of his screen-friendly face and subtle currents running deep under his surface work, and his appearance in the mix is a pleasure. Kudos as well to Paul Dano as Dolarhyde's cowardly bully of a son whom Craig dismantles to great effect on a few occasions that earn laughs. Clancy Brown's frontier preacher and the town's lone voice of reason, Meacham, shows off his fine character acting skills in what otherwise could have been a thankless role in lesser hands. Adam Beach (FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS) also earns praise for his work as Nat Colorado, Dolarhyde's right hand man who proves himself to be much more than his boss suspects. Young Noah Ringer does passable work in a woefully underwritten role as Taggart's grandson and character-development foil for Ford's Dolarhyde in a rather clumsy, unsatisfying subplot about the life meaning of fathers and sons.

On that note, the writers corral including STAR TREK alumni Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof, plus the IRON MAN duo of Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby seemingly converged to interject dozens of unique character traits and twists matched to a smorgasbord of plot complications, but none of these individual moments ever meld into a must-follow story to enthrall us. The alien attacks on the dreary town of Absolution are motive enough for the general population and character combatants like Lonergan and Dolarhyde to band together in defense against these human-rustlers from outer space. Unfortunately what follows are revelations about who these people are which tick off by page counts rather perfunctorily, with some secrets so telegraphed that audiences will grasp them long before the writers drop the scripted shoe. Much of the second and third acts are a collection of (semi)great ideas one could include in a film titled COWBOYS & ALIENS without ever mining this potentially mind-blowing concept for what wonders it might embody. Swap out aliens for a few dozen classic frontier bad guys, and you have the most basic plot engines of western shorts and sagas from the last eighty years of Hollywood on the Range. What we wanted is CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE WILD WEST, but what they gave us is ALIEN GOLD DIGGERS OF 1879.

Favreau deserves credit for sticking to his guns and letting the characters drive this tale instead of the aliens running roughshod over the story, even if ILM's nifty visual effects of buzz-bomb alien fighters and somewhat hackneyed space monsters trade away spectacle to remain second fiddle behind the stars. COWBOYS & ALIENS' toughest battle may well be that its brash title conjures up a thousand tantalizing, geektastic possibilities that no one film could ever contain to satisfy its high-concept hooked audience. The bold idea at its heart is so overpowering, that nothing short of Spielberg's own two ET triumphs could attempt to top it, and Favreau's loosely comic-inspired western tale just doesn't have the firepower in its holster to outshoot its expectations. Enjoyable performances lift the film as high as it's going to soar, but COWBOYS & ALIENS remains a little too grounded in genre reality for its own gun-toting good.

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