Appaloosa…what a snooza
Saturday, January 24th, 2009
I watched APPALOOSA last night and was quite dismayed to find that the commercials showing intense confrontations between Ed Harris (who directed and co-wrote this film), Viggo Mortensen, and Jeremy Irons had sold me on a completely different film. The destinies of this trio of gunslingers revolved entirely too much around an even shallower character played by RENE ZELWEGlemonbitterface. There were definitely some themes explored that I’ve never seen in a western before and it seemed that there was an effort for the characters to speak in a more modern parlance, perhaps to encourage us to view these wannabe-archetypes in a new light. Acting was my reason for staying awake and the characters of Virgil Cole and Mr. Hitch, two death-dealing peacemakers whose only trade is violence, were played convincingly by Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen. The territory covered by the story was far from what I expected, however, and I spent much of the film wondering if there had been some BrokebackMountain-action in the history of Harris and Mortensen’s “partnership” and that was BEFORE there was a scene where Ed Harris was choosing drapes for his new home. Perhaps if I had been attracted in the least to Ms. Zelwenschwarzenegger, I would have understood why her character had all the alpha males around here completely flustered. The gunslingers in this film had much more to say than THE MAN WITH NO NAME and basically, I didn’t want to hear it…
- look at me! I’m down here ruining the movie!