Appaloosa
"Appaloosa" is a warmly made, slightly offbeat movie about friendly devotion. It also happens to be a western, and every man in it is grizzled or wizened or both. They could all be in contention for a Civil War postage stamp. The exception is Virgil Cole, the marshal-for-hire played by Ed Harris, who co-wrote and directed "Appaloosa." Virgil has almost no hair. His beady eyes smolder beneath a hat whose brim could double as one of Saturn's rings.
Virgil is lonely. For years, he and Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen) have been dropping into places, enforcing the law, and leaving. The individual roots they put down keep getting ripped up for an itinerant life in each other's company. What are these two, best friends? Life partners? Brothers? Some combination of all three. Then a widow named Allison French (Renée Zellweger) arrives in the New Mexico town they're protecting from a corrupt rancher, Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons). This woman allows Virgil and Everett to consider that each man is not enough for the other. Allison and Virgil move quickly toward settling down together, but he's never known domesticity. He's married to work and to some extent to Everett.
Harris and actor Robert Knott adapted "Appaloosa" from a Robert B. Parker novel, and they've held onto the dialogue, which conjures images of tumbleweed blowing through a Dashiell Hammett book. One of the townsmen who hire Virgil and Everett describes Bragg and his men's freeloading: "They been living off us like coyotes living off a dead buffalo's carcass."
In so many ways, the film is a slim, traditional western. Even if Virgil's hat is black, the law is good, and Bragg is not. In the middle of the picture, Virgil and Everett escort Bragg out of town to be hung for murder. The genre does undergo the occasional sexual adjustment, particularly in matters involving Allison, who is very much the prudent, wifely woman she appears to be. But her primness isn't the whole story. She likes a man's attention regardless of whose it is.
"Appaloosa" is a traditional western in that it tolerates certain character flaws. Vicious killing is a crime; promiscuity is not. And so Harris affectionately mines the characters' relationships for comedy. Virgil's enumeration of Allison's finer points to Everett is hilariously basic. "Chews her food good" is one dubious endorsement. Even Bragg is a source of amusement, although with Irons in the part, how could he be otherwise? Irons sounds as if he's talking with marbles in his mouth again, but he pumps the performance with enough dastardly charm and exasperation that even Virgil and Everett seem to be having second thoughts about supervising his death march.
Zellweger manages to overcome costumes that look as if they're wearing her. All she has to do is smush up her face and people forgive her everything. In silence, Mortensen has become a truly soulful actor. Standing back and watching a scene unfold around him can be a far more entertaining experience than having him explain what he thinks or how he feels. In other words, the western suits him, although not quite as well as it does Harris, who, as an actor, is on his best behavior here. He lets his body language do all the talking. More than once we get a nifty shot of the actor in stern repose. His feet are up, a rifle rests in his lap, his eyes have drifted off yonder. It's a window into a character that also doubles as a handsome self-portrait.
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com. For more on movies, go to www.boston.com/ae/movienation.
Video
