What's not to like?
I
reckon that Ed Harris in a bar one day grumbled, “They don’t make Westerns like
they used to” and the person he was with, maybe it was Viggo Mortensen, said, “Well,
hell, Ed, make one.”
Appaloosa is an excellent modern
Western which has no pretensions to revisionism or artiness. It is ‘just’ a
good telling of a good tale. Westerns these days are meticulous in their
attention to detail, and the costumes and props are all just right. It really
helps; it gives you faith in the credibility and shows respect. So well done to
the props people and the costume persons and all the crew that work on that
aspect.
The smoking gun
And of course to Mr. Harris.
Because Ed Harris produced, directed, co-wrote and starred in this picture.
Hell, he even sings a song at the end. Even if you (quite sensibly) are not an auteuriste, you’d be tempted to refer to
this movie as ‘Ed Harris’s Appaloosa’.
The story tells of a pair
of friends who do ‘gun work’ for a living, bringing a kind of law ‘n’ order to
treed towns, because they are good at it and don’t really know what else to do.
They go from place to place cleaning up the town. In this one they have to keep
unscrupulous ranch boss Jeremy Irons locked in jail till the judge gets there. So it’s Warlock
meets Rio Bravo. Harris and Viggo Mortensen (with his 8 gauge) as his
partner are outstanding. They complement each other so well. They are friends
to the core and the writing and directing shows that very well, as much by the
silences as anything. Roger Ebert has justly compared their relationship to
that of Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call in Lonesome Dove.
Friendship
Come to think of it, Tommy
Lee and Bob would have made a good Virgil and Everett…
Jeremy Irons is very
convincing as a tough rancher. I was going to say “convincing for an Englishman”
but that would be unfair. There’s a good record of Brit actors making authentic
Westerners – think of Stewart Granger, Sean Connery and Christian Bale, to name
but a few. Furthermore, there were plenty of English ranchers on the real frontier,
like John Tunstall. In praise of Jeremy’s performance we would say that he
makes a worthy opponent of Virgil and Everett.
Irons: really good
Renée Zellwegger has an
extremely difficult part. She has to play a fickle, promiscuous, disloyal
coquette who is also human and sympathetic. Ms. Zellwegger does well: she
manages all but the last adjective but I don’t know that anyone could have
achieved them all. I love her dreadful piano playing. The supporting actors are
commendable too (Ariadna Gil, James Gammon & Timothy Spall especially). The
judge is Mr. Harris’s dad and rather good.
The gunplay is thrilling,
there is a train hold-up, there are dangerous Apaches and fisticuffs in the
saloon. Heck, what more do you want?
The gunfighter-marshal is
called Virgil Cole and permutations of Cole/Virgil/Morgan are standard for a
hero’s first or last names, especially if they are lawmen or gunmen. It’s a
proper Western, alright. Viggo even rides off into the setting sun at the end.
Yet the film manages all this without clichés, without disrespect to the genre.
Gun experts can learn from
IMDb that “because the only remaining 8 gauge shotguns on the
market were either too antique or too valuable to use, the movie's armorer,
Gibbons Ltd., had to specially contract for replicas. Gunsmith Steve Karnes
purchased three replica Colt 1878 shotguns and modified the barrels so that all
three sets would have bore sizes equal to that of a real 8 gauge shotgun. The
first two shotguns were designed to fire full-load 12 gauge blank rounds (one
gun could be used while the other was cleaned or repaired from a previous film
shoot.) The third shotgun was designed to chamber 8 gauge inert rounds, and was
used for reloading scenes. All three were then given identical, 'aged'
finishes, to make them appear old and used.”
8-gauge
The film is visually attractive.
Dean Semler (Dances With Wolves) was
the photographer and it was filmed in Texas and round Santa Fe in New Mexico. There’s
also nice music (Jeff Beal).
The San
Francisco Chronicle review said,
“In terms of tone, it falls somewhere between
"Silverado" and the original "3:10 to Yuma." Fans of last
year's artsy and cerebral Jesse James movie will consider this a setback for
the genre.” This
is quite wrong. True Western fans (I speak proudly as one) love all four films.
There’s a very good
screenplay, by Harris and Robert Knott, from the excellent novel by the late
Robert B Parker. I love Parker’s books. I have read all the Spenser novels,
twice. But his series of Western tales about Virgil and Everett are splendid
too. I have commented elsewhere on the crossover between tough private eye and
Western stories. They both deal in lead, friend. The ‘business’ of Virgil’s
striving for vocabulary and using West Point-educated Everett as a dictionary is
clever and amusingly done.
Like Henry Fonda on the Tombstone sidewalk
There are some excellent
recent Westerns. But Appaloosa isn’t
the post-modern shoot-em-up that the 2006 3:10 to Yuma was and it certainly isn’t the dark, probing Western that Eastwood’s
masterpiece Unforgiven was. It isn’t
that intellectual mood-piece The Assassination of Jesse James… either; it’s a timeless, straight-down-the-trail
classic Western and all I can say is Hallelujah.
We most definitely need
Harris and Mortensen back to make one of the Parker sequels. Five years have
gone by, Mr. Harris. Just a reminder.
Come back soon
I agree this is a good one - best western since Open Range. Normally I run a mile from anything with Renee Zellwegger, and I do think her character here is the weakest in the movie (not all her fault), but it survives thanks to the compelling interaction between Harris and Mortensen. I also think Jeremy Irons was miscast, not because he's English but because I feel the role needed a more intimidating presence.
ReplyDeleteIn some ways they missed (or perhaps deliberately avoided) an opportunity to explore some bigger themes, such as the position of men like Harris as towns grew and the frontier disappeared. There were some hints of that. Instead the final act, resolving the Irons story, kept the movie fairly light.
Yes, I think those are astute comments.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I thought Renee superb in Nurse Betty but didn't care for her at all in this!
Irons I thought was steely and the way they established his brutal credentials early on by having him shoot the lawmen in cold blood made him a worthy adversary.
Thanks for your comments.
Jeff