Feelings get you killed.
This is a very fine adaptation of the western novel Appaloosa (2005) by the late great Robert B. Parker, famed for his tough smart modern day private detectives (Spenser and Randall) and lawman (Stone).
In this story, professional gunmen Virgil Cole (Ed Harris) and Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen), who have been working as a team for a decade, are hired to bring order to the lawless town of Appaloosa. The town is being terrorised by local rancher Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons), who murdered the previous marshall and deputies.
The deal Cole makes with the city council is straightforward. As City Marshall, Cole lays down the law; people comply or are arrested; if they resist arrest, he shoots them or Hitch shoots them. Cole embodies the law; effectively, he IS the law. Beyond their obvious expertise with weapons, Cole and Hitch maintain the law by their public willingness to put their lives on the line. Facing a large group of armed men attempting to break a prisoner out of jail, for instance, Cole's stated readiness to die and to kill while dying breaks the resolve of the gang leaders.
Cole and Hitch are extraordinarily tough, pragmatic, straight-talking straight-shooting guys, laconic in the extreme, living according to strict codes of honour; supermen in a man's world. But into this world comes now a glamorous seductive flirty femme fatale, a beautiful piano-playing widow, Mrs Allie French (Renée Zellweger). Hitch spots her first, but she sets her cap at uber-male Cole. Hitch withdraws, but the stage is set for a difficult triangle, resting on one big question: what moral code, if any, does this woman live by, and will it be sufficient to keep her out of trouble?
I have read the source novel, and as far as I recall, the film sticks pretty close to plot of the book, and ably catches the distinctive unhurried pace and the flavour of the iconic characters of the main protagonists. The book is very filmic anyway, in the spare style Parker uses, with little description, mainly action and dialogue. "Stoic" is the word RottenTomatoes gives to the main characters, and that's right. That also means their actions are all very restrained, and their dilemmas are played out in a very understated low-key way, by inference, bizarrely, rather like a restrained social drama such as "Remains of the Day" (Merchant & Ivory, 1993).
Ed Harris is perfectly cast in the central role of Virgil Cole, believably tough and laconic, embarrassed at his limited vocabulary, which he constantly attempts to improve by reading books. Mortensen is very good as Harris's sidekick and Jeremy Irons is excellent in the role of the murderous rancher Bragg.
Unlike Ebert who says, 'Zellweger is powerfully fetching in this role,' the main fly in the ointment for me is Zellweger in the role of Allie French, the woman who takes up with Ed Harris' character. The quality of her acting is not in question, it's just that she seems miscast as a femme fatale. The role requires a woman able to bewitch and enthral men. I'm sorry to be ungallant, but in this particular film she simply isn't attractive enough, certainly not as attractive as the character in the book. In every respect she fits the part, except for her face, which inexplicably looks abnormally swollen.
- Director: Ed Harris
- Writers: Robert Knott and Ed Harris (screenplay), Robert B Parker (novel, 2005)
- Starring: Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renee Zellweger, Jeremy Irons, Timothy Spall, Lance Henriksen, Luce Rains, Tom Bower, Girard Swan, Ariadna Gil
- Rating: Full price
- When seen: 09 Apr 2010, 01 August 2011
- Where seen: Home
- More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia
Written in WriteRoom, formatted using HyperEdit, posted from my MacBook Pro
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