Appaloosa

Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris in “Appaloosa.”

Get on your high horse to see ‘Appaloosa’

Published Jan. 15, 2010

Get on your high horse to see ‘Appaloosa’
Well partners.
It isn’t often we mosey on over to hitch ourselves to the couch to watch a horse opera.
But that’s what I did the other day.
The film is “Appaloosa,” starring Ed Harris (who also directs) as Appaloosa’s shoot-first sheriff, Viggio Mortensen as his deputy and Renee Zellweger as the new girl in town, Allison French. She’s the one female in town who isn’t a prostitute. (She doesn’t charge.)
Harris and Mortensen are hired to clean up the town and when the bad guys resist, they are quickly gunned down.
The film opens with Jeremy Irons, another bad guy, gunning down the previous sheriff and his deputy.
New-sheriff Harris is serious and doesn’t mess around. Obey or die.
But his heart softens when the widow Zellweger arrives and needs a clean but respected and inexpensive place to stay. She only has $1.
She melts the sheriff’s heart and they are soon an item. The house being built on the edge of town will become their love nest.
The Zellweger character doesn’t even mind when Harris beats a man nearly to death for using bad language in front of her in the saloon.
But then, Zellweger makes a play for the deputy, too.
Meanwhile, a young man tells the sheriff he witnessed Irons killing the previous sheriff and deputy. At the trial, Irons denies the charge as does a packed courtroom of his followers, who happened to be there to witness the killing.
The elderly judge tells the young whistleblower to jump on his horse and ride, then sentences the Irons character to death.
Irons’ followers kidnap Zellweger so they can exchange her for the Irons’ character as the good guys head off via a train for his hanging.
Zellweger is a victim in name only, since she doesn’t mind cavorting with her captors in a nearby pond.
Mortensen is the most interesting character in the film. He is steadfastly loyal to the Harris character while confessing his own insecurities to a series of sympathetic prostitutes.
The scenery in the Blu-ray version is beautiful and Harris does a nice job of directing and taking the prime role.
The film balances between being entertaining and realistic and going a little too far, as in, say, HBO’s “Deadwood.”
If you miss your regular fix of westerns, once a staple of TV and movies, give “Appaloosa” a look.

APPALOOSA • Directed by Ed Harris • Written by Ed Harris and Robert Knott • Runtime: 115 minutes • Rated R for language and violence. • 2 1/2 stars out of 4