Appaloosa

There was a time when Westerns were in common in cinemas as stupid teen comedies are today. Now when a Western comes along there's a tendency to evaluate it as if it is making a commentary on the whole genre, or applying it to the conditions of humanity today. Appaloosa, directed by its star, Ed Harris, seems not to be interested in any of that. It's the kind of Western that, aside from a bit more blood and some crude sexuality, could have been churned out in the era of Western saturation. It also, unfortunately, is only about as good as an average Western.

Appaloosa, in some respects, is a love story between two men (but a platonic one) that has a woman come between them. Harris and his sidekick, Viggo Mortensen, are peace officers who have been hired by the businessmen of the titular town to clean up a rough band of hooligans led by Jeremy Irons, who has killed the previous marshall. The first twenty minutes or so of this film is very reminiscent of one called Warlock, in which Henry Fonda and Anthony Quinn are lawmen for hire brought in to clean up a town. That film focused on the nature of power, as Fonda demands absolute control, as does Harris in this film. However, the whole corruption of power issue is raised and then dropped, as Appaloosa isn't interested in political philosophy.

Instead, the film changes gears with the arrival of Renee Zellweger as a widow. Harris takes a shine to her (he's so deadly honest, though, that he asks her if she's a whore, because he's not used to single women who are not). The film then becomes something of a love triangle, as Zellweger is not the prim woman she seems to be, and makes a play for Mortensen the first chance she can get.

Harris is clearly a fan of Westerns, as he inserts almost every cliche known to the genre into the mix. You'll recall a dozen or so other films, aside from Warlock: Shane, High Noon, Open Range, 3:10 to Yuma, and many others. It's difficult these days to make a totally original Western, and frankly Harris doesn't seem interested in breaking new ground, he seems more interested in recapturing a past era.

The film is smashing to look at. Harris proves to have a good eye (this is only his second film as a director, following Pollack) and he teams with cinematographer Dean Semler, to create some arresting visual images. My favorite was a shot of a cougar overlooking a ridge as a locomotive passes below. But there's also something fussy about his direction. It's meticulous to the point of obsessiveness. He milks the laconic cowboy dialogue for comedy (Harris and Mortensen's characters don't waste words and don't equivocate), but the story is muddled and meandering. Some of the characters' motivations are puzzling.

Harris' character is righteous to the point of fanaticism. He is prone to reading Emerson, and one of the reasons he fancies Zellweger is because of the way she chews her food. He may be the oddest gunslinger in film since Marlon Brando in The Missouri Breaks. Mortensen, who narrates the film, is more interesting, in that he seems completely normal yet has ridden with Harris for twelve years. One has to believe that he's put up with a lot over those years. It's Zellweger who gives the strangest performance, though, but I think the culprit is the script. She is in the classic madonna/whore situation. The source material is a novel by Robert B. Parker, who is best known for his Spenser detective novels. I've read several of them, and creating realistic women is not his strong suit. Zellweger's character is sort of a macho guy's fever dream come true.

If you stay through the credits, you'll hear an odd song that Harris wrote and sings. It's full of lyrics about whorin' and screwin.' Perhaps this is the key to the whole thing--Harris was determined to address those cheatin' women of the Old West.