Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris didn’t share nearly enough screen time in David Cronenberg’s comic book treatise “A History of Violence.” But along comes “Appaloosa,” a classical Western rooted in a mature formulation of the buddy movie, to show just how comfortably these two pros fit together. As two friends and partners in the peacekeeping-for-hire business, Mortensen and Harris (who co-wrote the screenplay and directed) bring a wordless chemistry into the surgically-precise dialogue. The resulting portrayal of male friendship is sometimes funny, often poignant, and strongly moving; a pleasure to watch. And Zellweger, here effectively made-down to a more earthy attractiveness than her fashionably perky Bridget Jones, keystones the drama with a role that is part distressed damsel, part femme fatale, and an unusual catalyst for what seems to be a love triangle, but is something intriguingly less and more.
Sensitive to the Old and the Contemporary
Fresh on the heels of the lyrical “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” and the stunted “3:10 to Yuma,” “Appaloosa” is a very handsome film of modest, down-to-earth ambition and very handsome direction. Jeff Beal’s appealing, but slightly schizo style-tripping score is a bit on the strange side but perfectly pitched for a film rooted in the old but mindful of the contemporary. And by classical Western, I mean to say that “Appaloosa” isn’t afflicted with revisionist tendencies, post-modern cheekiness or acid trips of varying quality, but instead makes unironic use of genre literary codes and visual vocabularies to tell a human story. “Appaloosa” builds itself on the traditional foundations of the Western genre – the film has a terrorized town, a murderous cattle baron smoothly played by Jeremy Irons, a woman in distress, and gunslingers to the rescue – without overly genuflecting at its feet.
At heart, “Appaloosa,” adapted from a novel by Robert B. Parker, is a low-key character drama, a simple yet sincere morality play (and unlikely romance) that fits into the year’s law and order theme, albeit without the despairing cynicism of “The Dark Knight” (some bitterness, perhaps, and no small amount of wistfulness, but certainly not bleak). Virgil Cole (Harris) and the quiet Everett Hitch (Mortensen) exist in that disconnect between law and justice; mercenaries legitimized by law, even genuinely concerned by law and justice but faced with the law’s limitations in the isolated locale of the barely-civilized Wild West town that serves as a microcosm for human society. It’s the vagaries of love and the bonds of friendship, more so than gunplay, that fuel the narrative. Exemplifying just how well Harris and Mortensen work together, “Appaloosa” delivers its biggest dose of satisfaction in an ending that differs from the usual Western not in what happens but in why it happens – an explanation that defines the movie’s success.
If the Western genre is dead or, worse, passé, “Appaloosa” proves that it’s too early, as always, to write the obituary.
Entertainment Value: ** (out of two)
Technical Quality: ** (out of two)
Appaloosa. Warner Bros./New Line Cinema present a film directed by Ed Harris. Written by Robert Knott and Harris. Based on the novel by Robert B. Parker. Starring Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renee Zellweger, Jeremy Irons, Timothy Spall, and Lance Henriksen. 115 minutes. Rated R (for violence and language).
Frédérik invites discussions at his blog (frederik-sisa.blogspot.com).