Fun slinging

By Timothy Woodlock
West Times Staff

These days Hollywood is making Westerns at longer and longer intervals, and decent ones are even rarer. Appaloosa, actor Ed Harris’ latest directorial effort, doesn’t waste the opportunity to get it right.

Adapted from legendary crime writer Robert B. Parker’s novel, the film tells the story of Virgil Cole (Harris) and his partner, Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen), two freelance gunmen who travel from town to town cleaning out the bad guys. Cole is utterly impassive, taking in every situation with his raptor-like eyes before acting on his instinct, not feeling. He is arguably a sociopath.

Hitch, on the other hand, is a Civil War veteran who headed west to “expand” his soul. While Cole believes in the badge’s righteousness, Hitch sees law as “a way to feel easier about being a gunman.” The two men are best friends and loyal to the bone, but they see the nature of the frontier and their role in it through different perspectives, and these conflicting personalities give every scene added depth.

The story takes place in 1882 Appaloosa, New Mexico. After the ruthless prospector Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons) murders the town marshal and his two deputies, the city councilman swear in Cole and Hitch to clean Bragg and his gang out.

This would normally be an open and closed case, except Bragg is extremely well-connected in Washington D.C., and the concupiscent Allison French (Renée Zellweger) has just made Appaloosa her new residence. Cole is instantly smitten with Allie. The story becomes as much about courage and good’s triumph over evil as it is about the changing dynamic of Cole and Hitch’s friendship.

Every role is played superbly, but Harris and Mortensen take the film from good to great. Using facial expressions and understatement, the actors distill the nature of a relationship complicated by its own simplicity. Irons as Bragg is a terrific scoundrel who places too much confidence in the forces that protect him. Zellweger perfectly portrays a manipulative bed-hopper, but she also captures the motivation for the ultimate actions of all the characters in Appaloosa – survival.

The setting isn’t incidental. The film is intended to be a classic Western, not just a character story. Harris captures the beauty and ruggedness of the Western Frontier with gorgeous, sprawling shots of the open country, dirty costumes, grimy makeup, and lightning-fast gunfights. Justice prevails, wickedness can’t hide, and the innocents watch timidly through windows as the two forces battle it out.

In the film’s beginning Hitch ponders the unpredictability of our paths, the way the foreseeable seemingly never happens and the unforeseeable becomes life. By the film’s end both Cole and Hitch have taken the step into the unforeseeable, but only one of them can truly take solace in his choice.

With Appaloosa, Harris has taken Hollywood’s next step in American Westerns, and he can take pride in his work.