As tempting as it is to label Cowboys & Aliens a genre mashup, that path leads to confusion – which goes some ways to explaining the mixed reviews and box office performance. Viewed as a seemingly irresolvable chimera, reactions to the film are akin to the befuddlement that the Saturday Night Live’s “It’s Pat!” sketches exploited for laughs, only with less amusement and interpretive acuity. For reference, consider Firefly, a bona fide mashup of two genres that the San Francisco Chronicle’s Tim Goodman, in his review of the cult TV series, described as “alarmingly opposite.” Here we were presented with an aesthetic that jammed together Western and sci-fi tropes, leading to scenes that played out as Westerns with ray-guns and hovering vehicles. Whedon’s blending of visual vocabularies from two strongly defined genres yielded results akin to the Spanglish that comes from the meld of Spanish and English. It worked, albeit very creakily, but the show’s appeal ultimately emerged from the strong storytelling and compelling character archetypes drawn from Western rather than Science Fiction sensibilities.

Though our eyes might lead us to conclude otherwise, Cowboys & Aliens surprises as a straightforward piece of speculative fiction, positing the admittedly popcorn scenario of an alien incursion into the Wild West. Director Jon Favreau – whose cinematic instincts belong in the same class of traditional filmmaking home to the likes of Clint Eastwood, despite Iron Man 2 – understands how a film's visual presentation is as much, if not more so, a manifestation of characters and their environment than the plot itself. Although Western plots tend to emerge from moral dilemmas in the barely-there-civilization of a growing country, their nature is ultimately defined by their character of period pieces set during a particular time and place in American history. This is why Westerns have a slower style and pacing; without whiz-bang technology to provide for instantaneous long-distance communications or fast transportation, life doesn't occur at an accelerated rate.

Science fiction, for its part, is about asking “what if?” and speculating on the effects of science and technology on society. Although it’s easy to assume that science fiction is necessarily fixated on the future, there is nothing truly necessary about it and the speculation can just as easily use the 19th century as its starting point as any other. Cowboys & Aliens, then, is a science fiction story that plays out like a Western because its subject is the Wild West Era. For anyone expecting Independence Day or any other loud alien invasion movies, this may come as a disappointment; such is the influence of expectations over enjoyment of a film. Nevertheless, it would have been the hallmark of a lesser effort to squeeze familiar sci-fi and action-movie accoutrements into a Western setting to give us a spectacle that devolves from speculation to mere anachronism. As it is, we are mercifully spared the likes of a mad professor's wacky inventions suddenly made into instruments of salvation or some other steampunk affectation. After all, this isn’t The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., where such indulgences are appropriately (and effectively) encouraged.

It’s unfortunate that the fuss over the film’s identity obscures its many strengths, beginning with Favreau’s deft visuals and building up from subtle but rich character moments that might escape the attention of thrill-seekers. Harrison Ford, as a hard and ruthless rancher, gets the best of it as the story gradually builds on his character’s tender side to convincingly portray a complex man who ultimately does not live down to our initial impression. The film reminds us why Ford has been such a compelling actor, one who is far more than the sum of Indiana Jones and Han Solo. In a smaller role, Sam Rockwell gets the zero-to-hero treatment, but it persuades because we see hints of something more than meekness from the moment we are introduced. Favreau’s measured and masterful pacing lets us study the characters – or squint at them, in time-honoured Western tradition – when the dust settles and look back to see that their resolve did not emerge from a writer’s deus ex machina. The only disappointment is —

that Olivia Wilde’s role as an enigmatic woman who comes to help Craig’s amnesiac cowboy is not offered more than a tip of the hat.

And what of James Bond himself, Daniel Craig? Handsome, but not conventionally so or with the cloying style of a pretty boy, here’s an actor who has the classical presence of a Hollywood leading man, an actor’s actor, capable of layering the muscular physicality of his roles with emotional intensity and razor-sharp cleverness. Where Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull awkwardly attempted to pass a torch from Ford to Shia LeBoeuf, Cowboys & Aliens successfully presents Craig as the man who can assume Ford’s place, in his own way, within the current Hollywood generation. That’s especially good for a film that ranks as one of the year’s most misunderstood and underrated.

Cowboys & Aliens. Directed by John Favreau. Written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby. Based on Platinum Studios' “Cowboys and Aliens” by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg. Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Adam Beach, Paul Dano, Keith Carradine. 118 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for intense sequences of Western and sci-fi action and violence, some partial nudity and a brief crude reference).

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