I have always adored Westerns. My love affair with the genre started when I was about five years old and began watching Bonanza. A dining room chair became my horse as I rode the dusty plains of our house in a dull London suburb, the chair festooned with string reins and stirrups, Little Joe stirring my prepubescent heart. Bonanza was followed by Wagon Train, reruns of Gunsmoke, then The Virginian, Lancer and The High Chaparral. At the theatre Clint Eastwood reigned supreme, I read Zane Grey and I absorbed High Noon, The Searchers, Liberty Vallance and just about anything else on TV involving a horse and a man in a Stetson. Sad really
Then I took up horse riding for real and knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I'd been born the wrong sex and a hundred years too late. I should have been a cowboy.
So I went to see Appaloosa ready to enjoy it. To be honest, this film would have had to be a complete dog not to get at least 8/10 from me.
And Appaloosa is a Western of the best kind; peopled by taciturn men, women with a past, unshaven outlaws with big guns, and simple but good hearted townsfolk. Ed Harris plays Virgil Cole a gun for hire lawman, while Viggo Mortensen is his sidekick Everett Hitch, a man of few words but a very, very big gun. Hired to clean up a small town in New Mexico (the Appaloosa of the title), Cole and Hitch take on Randall Bragg (a wonderfully grizzly Jeremy Irons) the local bad guy. Cole and Hitch are best buddies who cover each other's backs, but the appearance of Mrs French (Renee Zellweger) in town threatens to distract them from the job in hand. After arresting Bragg for murder and seeing him tried and found guilty, Cole and Hitch set off to take him to jail, but when Mrs French is kidnapped they are forced to release Bragg in exchange, and then to track the outlaws and the captive woman across country. Mrs French's morality is called into question she will give her loyalty and her sexual favours to whoever she perceives as being Top Dog, but Cole weighs up the pros and cons and decides he loves her anyway. After all, she bathes every night.
Appaloosa tries to show the importance of the friendship between the men policing this tough frontier land, and the survival skills of the women who could never compete with the men physically but must try and make their own lives bearable.
The story is fairly simple and, as in all the best Westerns, it's a morality play where good and evil exist in plain view, where life is lived in black and white. Bragg is a murderer and a bully who has the town in his thrall, Cole and Hitch kill too, but where Bragg kills the defenseless and those who get in his way, Hitch and Cole kill in the name of the law, and prefer to arrest the baddie and send him for trial, trying to impose order on an untamed land. But the introduction of the alluring Mrs French with her wavering loyalties introduces more complex shades of grey to the scene. It tests the men's loyalty to each other, and suggests that we do whatever we have to do to survive in a world with no safety nets. I liked Zellweger in the part; she is attractive and sexy but doesn't play it as ridiculously beautiful or stick thin. She is attractive enough to turn heads in this small town, but doesn't look unrealistic. We know that any woman of truly stunning beauty would not be in this situation; she'd have been snapped up long before. Zellweger brings an air of brave and slightly knowing vulnerability to the role, rather than girly helplessness. She's a survivor, not a princess waiting to be swept off her feet for happy ever afters. In the end, Hitch does what a man must do to protect his friend, and, as in all the best Westerns, rides off alone into the sunset.
Directed by Harris, Appaloosa's beautifully shot, the landscape of New Mexico is stark and harsh. The dialog is very well written and often suffused with dry humour, all the performances are well nuanced, and I got the feeling it was a labour of love for all concerned. I thoroughly enjoyed it, (might even buy the DVD, a rarity for me!) and Ed Harris seems to be shaping up as an interesting director. My only slight comment might be that Viggo Mortensen plays yet another enigmatic man of few words. How often have we seen him do this now? Appaloosa, Eastern Promises, Hidalgo, LOTR, even his first role in Witness, all men full of meaningful silences and deep thoughts. I'm not saying I don't like these roles, I do. But I'd love to see him do something totally off the wall.
So I went to see Appaloosa ready to enjoy it. To be honest, this film would have had to be a complete dog not to get at least 8/10 from me.
And Appaloosa is a Western of the best kind; peopled by taciturn men, women with a past, unshaven outlaws with big guns, and simple but good hearted townsfolk. Ed Harris plays Virgil Cole a gun for hire lawman, while Viggo Mortensen is his sidekick Everett Hitch, a man of few words but a very, very big gun. Hired to clean up a small town in New Mexico (the Appaloosa of the title), Cole and Hitch take on Randall Bragg (a wonderfully grizzly Jeremy Irons) the local bad guy. Cole and Hitch are best buddies who cover each other's backs, but the appearance of Mrs French (Renee Zellweger) in town threatens to distract them from the job in hand. After arresting Bragg for murder and seeing him tried and found guilty, Cole and Hitch set off to take him to jail, but when Mrs French is kidnapped they are forced to release Bragg in exchange, and then to track the outlaws and the captive woman across country. Mrs French's morality is called into question she will give her loyalty and her sexual favours to whoever she perceives as being Top Dog, but Cole weighs up the pros and cons and decides he loves her anyway. After all, she bathes every night.
Appaloosa tries to show the importance of the friendship between the men policing this tough frontier land, and the survival skills of the women who could never compete with the men physically but must try and make their own lives bearable.
The story is fairly simple and, as in all the best Westerns, it's a morality play where good and evil exist in plain view, where life is lived in black and white. Bragg is a murderer and a bully who has the town in his thrall, Cole and Hitch kill too, but where Bragg kills the defenseless and those who get in his way, Hitch and Cole kill in the name of the law, and prefer to arrest the baddie and send him for trial, trying to impose order on an untamed land. But the introduction of the alluring Mrs French with her wavering loyalties introduces more complex shades of grey to the scene. It tests the men's loyalty to each other, and suggests that we do whatever we have to do to survive in a world with no safety nets. I liked Zellweger in the part; she is attractive and sexy but doesn't play it as ridiculously beautiful or stick thin. She is attractive enough to turn heads in this small town, but doesn't look unrealistic. We know that any woman of truly stunning beauty would not be in this situation; she'd have been snapped up long before. Zellweger brings an air of brave and slightly knowing vulnerability to the role, rather than girly helplessness. She's a survivor, not a princess waiting to be swept off her feet for happy ever afters. In the end, Hitch does what a man must do to protect his friend, and, as in all the best Westerns, rides off alone into the sunset.
Directed by Harris, Appaloosa's beautifully shot, the landscape of New Mexico is stark and harsh. The dialog is very well written and often suffused with dry humour, all the performances are well nuanced, and I got the feeling it was a labour of love for all concerned. I thoroughly enjoyed it, (might even buy the DVD, a rarity for me!) and Ed Harris seems to be shaping up as an interesting director. My only slight comment might be that Viggo Mortensen plays yet another enigmatic man of few words. How often have we seen him do this now? Appaloosa, Eastern Promises, Hidalgo, LOTR, even his first role in Witness, all men full of meaningful silences and deep thoughts. I'm not saying I don't like these roles, I do. But I'd love to see him do something totally off the wall.