Pokey pistol-packin’

Old-fashioned Western Appaloosa
moves along in fits and starts

by MARK SLUTSKY

The Western hasn’t changed much in the last, oh, 50 years or so. It generally comes in two flavours these days: old-fashioned (Open Range, 3:10 to Yuma) or mournfully revisionist (Unforgiven, Dead Man), and even the latter category dates back as far as 1962’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Like last year’s very good Yuma, Appaloosa, the new film from actor and director Ed Harris, belongs to the former category, a story of friendship, honour and good ol’-fashioned gunfighting on the frontier. It’s not nearly as good as either Open Range or Yuma, but despite the fact that it sometimes moves at a crawl, it’s more or less a solidly entertaining throwback.

Harris and Viggo Mortensen play Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, respectively, a pair of roving lawmen hired by the nervous officials of the titular town to take care of baddie Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons). We’re never quite sure what Irons is up to with his scheming, but we do know he’s killed a sheriff and his men, and that he’s a fast-shooting, remorseless smoothie. But Harris and Mortensen are pretty quick with their guns too. Things only get complicated with the arrival of Allison French (Renée Zellweger), a piano-playing chippy with designs on Harris.

Nothing new here, really. We’re talking stand-offs at ranches, duels on dusty main streets, train hold-ups, one-room jails where the laconic baddie can taunt the good guys from behind bars, whisky-soaked saloons… you get the picture. A lot of it is fun to watch, though very little will genuinely get your pulse racing, and too much of the film, especially the last third, tends to move in fits and starts.

Harris and Mortensen have decent chemistry as the justice-dealin’ duo, though they belabour the banter a bit; it’s best when you see them communicate through body language, Harris with his pistol and Mortensen with his eight-gauge, in the film’s many confrontations with armed thugs. Zellweger, though, is a weird one: her character is meant to be a little unlikeable, but I wasn’t sure if it wasn’t just her mannerisms that were bugging me until at least halfway through. Still, despite Appaloosa’s unevenness, it’s an okay oater and there’s nothing wrong with that.

APPALOOSA OPENS THIS
FRIDAY, OCT. 3

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