APPALOOSA

If you dig Westerns, like me, you’ll enjoy this one.

There’s the usual great genre stuff, like ruggedly stunning vistas, lots of silence with men on horses in the distance or close up, some Native American hostiles, lots of guns, lots of macho bump bumping, bad guys who look pretty bad, good guys who look pretty good, and a woman whose, well, let’s just say she’s pretty independent for a woman who’s actually so dependent on this male dominated world.

Ed Harris directed, co-wrote (with Robert Knott, an adaptation from a novel by Robert B. Parker), and stars in APPALOOSA. It’s his Gary Cooper shot and he holds the screen almost as well, though you can tell he’s not as tall and lanky, nor quite as iconic.

But still, he’s great to watch, his face aging but still masculinely beautiful with those blue eyes and that square jaw.

And the de rigueur sidekick as played by Vigo Mortensen is equally fun to watch, as he holds the screen as well as any classic Hollywood star I think.

I couldn't help an occasional chuckle of appreciation watching these two guys work out on screen, playing with the Western movie myths and plots, throwing in some authentic touches, like gunfighting not being about how fast you can draw—they enter fights with guns already drawn, which is historically correct—and some inauthentic ones—like using “presently” to mean now, as is the current usage, when back then it meant soon or shortly or sometime in the near future.

The female lead is played by Renee Zellweger, whose squished up facial expressions have been bugging me now for awhile. She can act, but sometimes it’s hard to see to what end. She works well in this flick, pulls off what the movie and the role require of her, and as usually happens, I surrendered to her presence and accepted her character and let the distractions of her mannerisms and physical qualities alone after a few scenes.

But Jeremy Irons as the bad guy—yeah, you heard me right, Jeremy Irons as a gunfighting Western bad guy!—was, for me, pretty unpersuasive. The weakest thing about the movie. Not that he can’t act or didn’t have moments of the required intensity. But for the most part, I didn’t buy him as a killer, let alone one of the most heartless and ruthless and experienced. The movie needed someone like Gene Hackman in UNFORGIVEN, now that was a Western bad guy.

But watching Harris and Mortensen was so much fun, the miscasting of Jeremy Irons didn’t matter so much in the end either. Because, basically the movie works.

If you dig Westerns, and especially the fact that they’re still making decent ones, you’ll be grateful to Ed Harris for making this one.