Appaloosa Review
By David Kempler
Appa Loser
About once a year or so, someone feels compelled to trot out a new Western despite the genre having been dead, or at least dormant for quite some time now. Inevitably, they almost all fail because of nothing more than the fact that the genre no longer has any appeal to people under the age of 50, or so. When films were in their infancy, the Western was perhaps the most popular of all, thrilling kids who would pack the local movie house every Saturday to catch their heroes in white hats fight, and eventually overcome, the bad guys in their black hats. Even outside of America, Westerns thrilled millions and many a foreigner's viewpoint of us was formed by watching this type of film.
In today's Westerns, there is a need to display more character insights into our heroes and villains. This can make for a far more layered view of that time period but it still usually misses the mark because the Western is still about guns and poor townspeople depending on good gunslingers to defend them against bad gunslingers. Perhaps the best in recent memory was "Unforgiven", Clint Eastwood's foray into the genre. It wasn't great but at least it didn't feel totally derivative.
This time around, we have "Appaloosa", with Ed Harris serving as director and co-writer of the screenplay, based on the novel by Robert Parker. Harris also stars as the good sheriff (Virgil Cole), despite his apparel being all black. The other half of his two man wrecking crew for goodness is Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen), an extremely bright man, but one of very few words. Cole isn't much of a talker either and both are the two most honest men on earth, at least according to themselves. The scared townsfolk have enlisted them in order to stop the terminal evildoer, Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons) from coming into town and doing as he pleases. At times, I couldn't help but flash to "Blazing Saddles" because the stereotypes at work here are almost as in your face as in the Mel Brooks classic.
What would a Western be without the good lady coming into town on the stage? Allison French (Renée Zellwegger) is our designated fair maiden and I'm not sure if Ms. Zellwegger does a horrendous job or if her part was written by a herd of monkeys randomly banging away at a keyboard. Whatever the case, every moment that she is on screen rises to the level of camp. You don't know whether to laugh at her or scream out at her to leave the screen. She is simply annoying and not in any way that helps the film.
The story runs its course with a nominal amount of unusual turns but for the most part there is absolutely nothing new brought to the table. I don't know if the novel was any good but the movie smells like a barn that isn't being cleaned often enough.
