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This was the weirdest, and worst, “vanity” project I’ve seen in quite a long time. I guess I shouldn’t try and get into Ed Harris’ bald-ass head and act like I know his motives and intents but it’s really hard not to with an actor-turned-director and a cowboy flick. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that Harris saw what Clint Eastwood did with the sublime masterpiece “Unforgiven” as well as the superb job Kevin Costner did in front of and behind the camera on the beautiful “Open Range”; and he tried to emulate that. He tried…for example: there is an evil British landowner seemingly able to get the town big-wigs in his pocket, the main characters are a pair of honest and honorable, yet flawed, lawmen riding together in the name of justice and law n’ order, and a wild and untamed woman threatens to come between them. For these reasons I just couldn’t shake the idea he took the template laid out by the above and, well, came up far short. Never giving Appaloosa a chance at being anywhere near as good as both of those outstanding films because Appaloosa doesn’t possess the qualities and charms they did.
So let me quit trying to analyze the man.
The film never really gets up off the ground. At all. In my opinion the greatest of westerns can have the simplest of plots, and Appaloosa starts out doing nothing different than any of a dozen westerns you’ve seen before. Greedy, evil landowner does wrong and newly marshaled good guys aim to bring him to justice, WHATEVER THE COST! Fine. Seems simple enough, and many a good to great cowboy picture has been made using plots similarly simple. But then wild cards start getting tossed into the mix and characters start acting all willy-nilly and before I knew it in between stilted uncomfortable scenes of boring, clichéd dialogue I started hoping to get more shots of sweeping desert vistas and the like. You know a film is bad when you’d rather see continuous shots of the New Mexican desert than another glimpse of Renee Zellweger screwing her face up in an imaginary vice and offering up awkward and pensive nervous laughter to the awkward and pensive nervous reactions of everyone around her.
I’ve never really understood the Zellweger hate I see in PTP and other places, I liked her enough in the films I’ve seen, but this one…ehhh me no likey.
Viggo was good in his role as Everett Hitch, Deputy Town Marshall. The Vig Mortmeister’s career has been hit or miss with me (more often hit), but he was good here. No, make that he was really good. He was the bright spot of this dreck.
Jeremy Irons was atrociously miscast. I like Irons, I LOVED him in Reversal of Fortune, but he should never, EVER, be allowed to walk around in cowboy duds with bullet belts and shooters dangling off his 26” waist.
Lance Henriksen, who even when he was young looked old, looks dead. He looked like Pruneface from Dick Tracy, except with a mustache.
Ed Harris was a mess. He’s usually rock solid but I don’t even know where to begin with my un happiness with him in this.
It’s like…do I dislike his choices as an actor, or do I dislike his choices as a director for using the scenes in which he acted so poorly, or do I dislike his writing (adapted from a book, I believe) which made Ed Harris the actor say horrible dialogue that Ed Harris the director had to film…?!? His character was at first the clichéd quiet, smoldering, sturdy and honest lawman who, while sturdy and honest and a lawman, can also go over the line and be a violent bully. But after just seeing RZ for twenty seconds he becomes a goofy, smitten fool who adopts a “aw, gee shucks” manner. He then acts so irrationally and makes such obviously poor decisions for himself and his partner all in the name of a love of an amoral woman who has wronged him repeatedly, you start to wonder why the hell his partner is so damned loyal in the first place.
Two bits of the stunningly shitty script stuck with me. I think it’s because in both instances these were meant to be profound, character defining and plot summarizing moments for the audience to really sit back and soak in the genius:
Town Marshall Virgil Cole (Ed Harris): (To Ally’s (Zellweger)’s asking of why a man convicted of murder and sentenced to death, freed by banditos he paid to break him out of prison, the re-captured by the law-men and put into prison, then pardoned because at one time he was friends with Chester A. Arthur, President of the United States , would ever come back to the town and show his face again) “Pride. It’s Pride, Ally…pride’ll make a man do funny things…” aaannnnddd…SCENE!!
Bragg (Jeremy Irons): “You’ll never hang me, Marshall!”
Town Marshall Virgil Cole (Ed Harris): (dramatic pause) “Never is a long time.”
aaannnnddd…SCENE!!
I think those two instances constitute a couple of hat tricks in the “cheese” department for Harris: a horribly cheesey way to end two cheesey scenes with cheese lines said cheesily.
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