Appaloosa – The Geekscape Review
Appaloosa, the western that expanded to over a thousand screens this past weekend, follows the story of two lawmen-for-hire, played by director and co-writer Ed Harris (Virgil Cole) and Vigo Mortensen (Everett Hitch) as they are hired with the clean up of the small New Mexico settlement of Appaloosa. The town is being terrorized by a local rancher named Randall Bragg and his group of thugs, culminating with the murder of Appaloosa’s sheriff and deputies in the film’s opening scene. So there’s our setup: Cole and Hitch, the two fastest no nonsense guns for hire that can be found, are brought into town to enforce the laws and protect the innocent from Bragg and his men.
The movie clips along for a solid fifteen minutes before things are complicated by the arrival of widower Allie French, played be Renée Zellweger. There’s a great showdown scene between Irons and Harris after the two lawmen have shot three of Bragg’s men in order to set an example of the new way things are going to be done. After that initial meeting, there’s a lot of good guys versus bad guys tension going on in the film that gets derailed a bit by the addition of Zellweger’s character. Sheriff Cole and Deputy Hitch begin to have slight differences between themselves, with Cole falling in love with French and deciding to build a home with her. Hitch can only stand and watch as the fastest, most emotionless gun he has ever seen (as well as his best friend) begins to lose his edge. This new change in his friend is not going to end well and might just be the opportunity that Bragg needs to get rid of the two lawmen and reclaim the town.
Based on Robert B. Parker’s 2005 western of the same name, the script for Appaloosa does a lot of things right. In classic western fashion, it sets up the archetypes and the world of the 1880s west very economically, where fifteen minutes in the story is ready to roll. What it does in the hands of Harris and co-writer Robert Knott, which may or may not be part of the novel, is take this set up and methodically lumbers along at a disciplined pace. This is not last year’s 3:10 to Yuma or Young Guns where action scenes drove the narrative. This is very much an actor’s western, with layered performances from Harris and Mortensen as their relationship weathers the slow pace of the film and the multiple plot-twists. Mortensen rocks as the loyal but weary Hitch and Ed Harris does a solid job as the tough and ultimately remorseful Cole. We’ve all seen Irons play the bad guy and he does it as well as anyone else and is great to watch here. But in an actor’s film, the biggest distraction is the inclusion of Renée Zellweger. As a viewer, you never really get used to seeing her onscreen alongside these tough guys playing tough guys. She just comes off as… not enough. She’s not enough of a presence on screen to believably justify all of the wreckage that her character leaves in on screen.
Like some of the internal beats that the actors are working through in the quieter than normal script, Harris’ visual directing in some scenes seems better tailored to the stage. There’s a staged flatness to a lot of the blocking and camera work and the majority of the movie is played pretty close to the belt. It would have been nice to see some more visual flare and crescendos firing in a film with such a steady visual beat but in the end you’re left with a carefully drawn picture of two men at silent odds over the future of their relationship. Appaloosa is worth watching on video or on demand if you’re a western fan, and there were pieces of the movie’s character work that reminded me of the failing relationship between John Wayne and Montgomery Clift in Red River. Unlike that seminal film, however, with Appaloosa there’s a lot of distance that could have been travelled but not enough energy in the story or direction to get it all the way there.
