How the West Was Won

I have always thought of Ed Harris as quite the thoughtful actor, you know, one who has balanced the act of being a team player by appearing in movies such as The Rock and Stepmom and being true to himself with memorable, award-worthy work in The Truman Show, The Hours, and A History of Violence.

In 2000, Harris began calling his own shots as a director with Pollock, which he has followed up with Appaloosa, his precise adaptation of the best-selling novel about two gunmen who travel through western towns cleaning them of bad guys.

When the gunmen, Virgil Cole (Harris) and Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen), arrive in the titular city, they find a small community that’s as lawless as it’s dusty, an isolated town suffering at the hands of renegade rancher Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons).

Bragg has not only taken from Appaloosa (horses, supplies, women) for his own, but he also has introduced the city marshal and a deputy to their maker. Everyone knows it, yet no one can do anything about it.

Enter Cole and Hitch. Everywhere Cole goes he becomes he the law. And everywhere he goes he enforces the law.

In Bragg, however, they find an unusually wily adversary who raises the stakes by playing with emotions. They are there to change the landscape of the city, but the city will change them in ways they never anticipated, not just because Appaloosa and Bragg present formidable challenges but because there’s lady.

Ah, yes, a lady named Allison French played by Renée Zellweger.

She’s a widow, she says, a piano and organ player, not a schoolmarm and not a whore. She immediately strikes the men’s fancy, and although she chooses Cole, she also bats her lashes at Hitch. She is careless with two not-so-delicate men, and eventually, she tears them asunder.

Appaloosa is a movie about friendship, about the roles that people play for those they love, the sacrifices they make, and the distances they travel. Each of us plays these roles, makes these sacrifices, and travels these lengths out of love. That’s what this movie’s about, not gunplay, and that’s what makes it that much more exciting.

My Rating ***

Photo: WorstPreviews.com.