The Old West.. where a lone cowboy leads an uprising against a terror from beyond our world. 1873. Arizona Territory. A stranger with no memory of his past stumbles into the hard desert town of Absolution. The only hint to his history is a mysterious shackle that encircles one wrist. What he discovers is that the people of Absolution don't welcome strangers, and nobody makes a move on its streets unless ordered to do so by the iron-fisted Colonel Dolarhyde (Ford). It's a town that lives in fear. But Absolution is about to experience fear it can scarcely comprehend as the desolate city is attacked by marauders from the sky.
Reviews
Empire Magazine
Dan Jolin
“It’s not groundbreaking, it’s not perfect, but it’s traditional and charming, and that counts for a lot.”
24/08/2011
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Variety
Peter Debruge
“Beneath all the state-of-the-art special effects beats an old-fashioned heart, one that prizes both of the genres in play.”
24/07/2011
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The Sunday Times
Cosmo Landesman
“It just sticks together all your favourite bits from westerns and alien films to produce a bit of fun. Still, fans of Ford and Craig are in for a treat.”
21/08/2011
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Total Film
Matthew Leyland
“It’s professional, respectable, watchable. But something’s missing. A bigger wow factor. A few more kinks and quirks to call its own. A surer sense of who its audience is.”
29/07/2011
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The Evening Standard
David Sexton
“If you can swallow the shameless set-up, it's all highly entertaining.”
19/08/2011
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The Independent
Anthony Quinn
“Non-aligned viewers may just wonder at the extreme silliness of it.”
19/08/2011
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The New York Times
Manohla Dargis
“... wavers uncertainly between goofy pastiche and seriousness in a movie that wastes its title and misses the opportunity to play with, you know, ideas about the western and science-fiction horror. ”
28/07/2011
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The Observer
Philip French
“[W]hatever works in the film has to do with the western, while virtually everything to do with sci-fi horror fails, including the confused geography of the final showdown, when a coalition of settlers, outlaws and Apaches take on the extraterrestrials.”
21/08/2011
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The Scotsman
Alistair Harkness
“All the film does is fuse together western clichés and sci-fi clichés to create another dully generic special effects extravaganza.”
19/08/2011
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The Daily Telegraph
Sukhdev Sandhu
“Five writers have laboured on turning Scott Mitchell Rosenberg’s 2006 graphic novel. They seem to have had competing ideas about what its real story is.”
18/08/2011
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Time Out
Anna Smith
“The biggest problem is a lack of humour: while Craig looks every inch the cowboy and handles gruff action well, Robert Downey Jr he ain’t.”
18/08/2011
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The Times
Wendy Ide
“The only way that this sci-fi western mash-up could be any good is if it were a bit more, well, rubbish ... It’s accompanied by all the self-importance, swagger and complete lack of irony which things that cost multiple millions of dollars usually come with, where actually it would be a more likeable and enjoyable experience if it just acknowledged its own idiocy.”
19/08/2011
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The Independent on Sunday
Nicholas Barber
“It's weird. Why put James Bond and Indiana Jones in the same film if you're not going to let them interact?”
21/08/2011
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The Daily Mail
Christopher Tookey
“It’s soulless and generic, with a plot that seems to have been made up as it goes along, with no discernible rules.”
19/08/2011
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The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
“... takes itself much too seriously, with acts of brutality outnumbering the gags.”
24/08/2011
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The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
“Something that might have been frankly better left as a throwaway joke, or a doodle on an executive's notepad, has actually made it through the system as a full-length feature film, directed with a not-very-light touch by Jon Favreau.”
18/08/2011
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The Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
“A leaden mash-up of western and science-fiction elements that ends up noisy, grotesque and unappealing.”
29/07/2011
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The Financial Times
Nigel Andrews
“The film is too worthless and witless to think about, let alone to write about”
18/08/2011
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