Appaloosa
I know, impressive. I saw this movie this evening and I am already writing about it. It must be something weird in the air, nearly Halloween, or just something else weird. So I debated between this movie, Appaloosa, and another movie, a French action thriller, titled, Tell No One. Appaloosa won out in the end because it was a western and it co-starred Vigo Mortensen. So off to see it I went, to an empty theatre, as I caught the very earliest show I could. I am thinking, in hindsight, that I must have caught the tail end in the run, but for the life of me I only really just recall having seen information about with in the last week or so.
The movie itself, as noted is a western. The movie gets it title from the town that the two law men that are the main characters are hired to protect, that being the town of Appaloosa. The two men, played by Vigo and Ed Harris are really nothing more than hired guns themselves, who just happen to generally only hire out to someone who pays and offers a badge in the bargain as well.
The hype in the previews that I have seen play up the two main characters having been best of buddies doing this for a long time together and makes a big deal of the widow who shows up, played by Renee Zellweger, as being this major divisive force between them. I must have missed that in the movie, as there was one little attempt by the widow to have both men and it was quickly snuffed out and that was that. Another thing, the whole widow thing, barely even mentioned and really did not add anything to the movie that much at all. The bad guy in the movie is played by Jeremy Irons and he does an okay job of the role. Though he is kind of one-dimensional. Actually we could say that of all the characters in this movie. He does have connections apparently and it gets him out of a jam in a major way mid way through the movie.
In the end, I found the whole movie to be kind of predictable. There is this one place where there is a discussion about feelings will get you killed and that is a theme that could have been explored deeper, given the nature of the whole movie. I think they missed an opportunity there. I guess in all fairness, I have to say that Ed Harris worked with what he had – transforming the script from the book on which it is based. And according to all accounts, the script as well as Ed’s directing are very faithful to the book. So perhaps the book was a bit lacking for making a big impact on the movie screen.
I guess my biggest beef with this is that it was just a run of the mill western. The last few years have seen very few westerns, as the genre was so played out after the 60′s and early 70′s. So the few that been made have tended toward the best that the western genre has had to offer. This one really seems to be so run of the mill that aside from the sharp crisp images of modern technology, it could be lost somewhere back there in the pile of westerns made in the 60′s. And that friends is not something the western genre needs.
