Appaloosa
by Ed Harris
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DVD details
Actor: Ed Harris, Jeremy Irons, Renée Zellweger, Timothy Spall, Viggo MortensenDirector: Ed Harris
Brand: Lions Gate
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.40:1
Running Time: 116 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-01-13
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: New Line Home Video
Product features:
- In Marshal Virgil Cole and deputy Everett Hitchs line of work, you shoot quick, you shoot clean, and you reload straightaway. No remorse. No looking back. No feelings. Feelings get you killed. Paired as rivals in A History of Violence, Ed Harris (who also directs, produces and co-scripts) and Viggo Mortensen stand together as longtime friends and for-hire peacekeepers Cole and Hitch in this charac
DVD Reviews of Appaloosa
DVD Review: WORST WESTERN I'VE SEEN SINCE TOMBSTONE(1993)!! Save your Money!!
Summary: 1 Stars
IF Appaloosa were a horse, I'd have to shoot it, solely because it didn't GO ANYWHERE!! This movie is a prime example of why WESTERNS get such a bad wrap now-a-days. I took the bullet so you wouldn't have to watch it, not even worth renting for the LANDSCAPES!! My Advice, Go see Wyatt Earp(Dennis Quaid as Doc Holiday, need I say more?) or Open Range(God Bless Michael Jeter), if you want a classic western, you can't go wrong with Magnificent Seven or Silverado, or ANY of Errol Flynn's Westerns! (Dodge City and They Died with Their Boots On come to mind!)
My sister and I are Movie Mavens, and being tom-boys, LOVE westerns, and this "film", term used loosely, was not worth the RENTAL PRICE, let alone whatever their production budget was! The most redeeming thing was Viggo Mortensen's valiant attempt to salvage the "material" he was given with his performance as Everett Hitch, by far the MOST INTERESTING, SYMPATHETIC CHARACTER IN THE ENTIRE STORY, but the man isn't a miracle worker and can't carry the whole movie on his own because he has to, unfortunately, interact with the other loathsome characters around him. This was a self-indulgent and cliche Western for Ed Harris, who "apparently" produced, directed, starred and co-wrote the screenplay adaptation from the novel. Someone PLEASE TELL HIM to stick with acting (Love Ed Harris as an actor, but this film was an all around mistake!)
If you've seen the Trailer, you have seen all of the best scenes in three minutes. The poor plot drags on for TWO HOURS. Great Academy AWARD WINNING or Nominated Actors didn't show in this no plot, no action, nothing film. From the cliche music, to the lack of creativity with the names (I suppose I have to blame the author for that!) to the sauntering at a relaxed paced to the "rescue"; The order of scenes and cuts are so jarring, that there is no real definition of time, no clue of how many days/weeks had they been there, how long did it take for these events to play out, a minor thing if the film is well written and edited, but here this detail blatantly stands out. This movie was Beyond Dull!
SPOILERS follow:
Pretty straight forward western format; A town in New Mexico is in trouble and mysterious strangers come to town to help clean it up. The whole mission of cleaning up the town and bring the bad guy to justice takes a backseat as soon as the dry eyed widow Mrs. French (Zellweger) catches Marshal Virgil Cole's (Harris) eye and fancy. As Soon as Allison French comes onto the scene, it becomes a bizarre love triangle, quadrilateral, pentagon type thing (more on this later). Mrs. French seems to have a 21st century mentality about relationships, because she's the one who initiates courtship with Marshal Cole, and it seems within hours or days goes to bed with him, and boom they are the town sweethearts getting a house together, not giving a fig newton about her reputation as a lady of the day would no doubt have cared about. Are they just dating? engaged? just going to live together in 1893? Who knows!
The character of Mrs. Allison French (Zellweger) is weak (in personality as well as development and performance), disloyal at the drop of her corset, just unlikable and annoying from the word "hello"(Yes, Zellweger lost me AT "Hello"), and her squinty eyes only momentarily distract from her horrid costumes and deliberate delivery to SHOW she was ACTING in this movie! As if to say "it's not me Rene Zellweger in a western, It's Mrs. French, I am Mrs. French now! do you follow where I'm going with this?" Mrs. French must have been born a Sagittarius, because when she's not with the Marshal she claims to love, she loves whatever man she's with. Mrs. French reminds me of a LEECH, attaching herself to a man out of necessity, for money, protection, "gratification", to be taken care of (obviously, this character was written by a man) and she is in constant search for the alpha male in whatever situation she finds herself in to provide her needs of the moment, who ever has the most power gets to be her bed buddy. The only difference between Mrs. French and the other "whores" in the movie is at least the "whores" get paid for what they do, their working girls with bills to pay, Mrs. French is just a slut. Usually there are two types of women in westerns, the prudish easily offended maiden, or the whores at the saloons. Mrs. French seems to be a bizarre attempt to merge the two, when the two personalities obviously contradict!! (For a wonderful western female role model examples, I would direct you to Olivia De Havilland in Dodge City and They Died with Their Boots On or Annette Bening in Open Range)
Even more idiotic, Mrs. French seems to resent that Marshal Virgil Cole is a lawman, which he had been for years before he met her!! She resents that he has to stay at his jail all day and WATCH HIS PRISONERS SO THEY DON'T, you know, ESCAPE and do more BAD THINGS!! As a character for women to identify with, she was stereotypically NEEDY, NAGGING, chronically disloyal, Dependent SOLELY on MEN, even for the time period, I understand there was no "women's lib" back then, but there was such an idea of dignity, self-respect, and the weight of reputation; I felt no sympathy for Allison French or the PROBLEMS SHE CREATED for herself. (Again, obviously written by a man.)
Marshal Cole (Harris) likes Mrs. French because she's "clean and smells good, chews her food nice" and isn't like the "whores and squaws I've been with", GAG! The dialogue was simple, laughable and SAD, there was an awful lot of Soap Opera introspection for Shoot EM UP COWBOYS. Cole (Harris) claims to have no feelings because he needs to compartmentalize and focus on doing his job: get the bad guys, but he's a school boy softy when Mrs. French walks in the room and goes on PICNICS! HITCH's (Mortensen) whore/lady friend doubles as his SHRINK on how to be the best SIDE KICK TO Marshal Cole's (HARRIS's) HERO. Should Hitch tell Cole that Mrs. French tried to kiss him? oh, riveting dilemma... NOT! HITCH was the only one I identified with because he's more "sensitive than those other cowboys" and seemed to be the most noble and moral of all the other characters.
OVER ALL, the pace was dreadfully slow and there was a lack of suspense through out the film. You know that usual excited feeling you get while watching a film you're actually enjoying, where you can't wait to see what comes next. I didn't CARE! Action? What action? The cleaning up the town mission is bring bad guys to justice for murder didn't seem as important to the Marshal when his girlfriend came to town in the previously mentioned "Love Trapezoid"; We paused it after about an hour, so I could make Popcorn, just so I could have something to do during the film, eat! When Hitch and Cole finally had something to do beside drink coffee, and analyze their feelings, they ride to the "rescue" at a sauntering pace while the damsel in distress, Mrs. French, is in kidnapped and in "danger". Don't worry she wasn't "defiled", she was a willing partner with her captor, betraying her beau, Marshall Cole, again for as she said "Survival".
The Final "GUN FIGHT" Was so anti-climatic I forgot that Jeremy Irons was even in the movie as the Villain because we hardly saw him, until he too had relations with Mrs. French (did I mention she was a slut?!) That being the apparent last straw that motivated the final gunfight, not by her suitor Marshal Cole, to defend the final shed of her "honor" if she had any to begin with that is, but by MR. Hitch to merely eliminate the Competition for his friend Marshal Cole!! Seriously?? That's your solution? that's you're way of being a good side kick? What's to stop Mrs. French from dropping her drawers with the next powerful man that comes to town!!
As previously stated, I love westerns, but this movie was/is seriously lacking!
In summary, JUST AS BAD if not WORSE than TOMBSTONE. Don't Bother, I took the bullet so you wouldn't have to! This is a MUST SKIP MOVIE!! SAVE YOUR MONEY!
Description of Appaloosa
Spencer Aimes is just your average, 1882, New Mexico Territory. Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch are itinerant lawmen, hired by desperate towns as marshal and deputy. The city fathers of Appaloosa hire them after Randall Bragg, a newly-arrived rancher with money and a gang of thugs, disrupts commerce and kills three local lawmen. Cole and Hitch contrive to arrest Bragg and bring him to trial, but hanging him proves difficult. Meanwhile, a widow has arrived in town, Allison French, pretty, refined, and good-natured. Virgil falls hard, and it seems mutual, but there may be more to Allie than meets the eye. Can friendship and skill with a gun overcome a pernicious villain and green-eyed jealousy?The Western has been an endangered species, on and off, for something like 40 years now. Welcome to Appaloosa, Ed Harris's film of the Robert B. Parker novel--first because it exists at all, but even more because Harris as star, director, and co-screenwriter (with Robert Knott) has managed to bring it to the screen with no hint of fuss or strain, as if the making of no-nonsense, copiously pleasurable Westerns were still something Hollywood did with regularity. Harris plays Virgil Cole, one of those ace gunfighter-lawmen whose name need only be mentioned to make a saloon go still. Cole and his shotgun-toting partner Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen) accept a commission to enforce law and order in the New Mexico town of Appaloosa. That basically means protect it from rapacious rancher Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons, looking right at home on the range), who murdered the previous town marshal like swatting a fly. Life becomes complicated when, about the time Bragg has been jailed to await trial, a fancy-dressing piano player calling herself Mrs. French (Renée Zellweger) steps down off the train. Cole commences to have feelings, and as he ruefully reminds Hitch, "Feelin's can get ya killed."
In his second directorial effort (following the 2000 biopic Pollock), Harris takes his cue from novelist Parker's often deadpan-comic touch, allowing action and character to accumulate in accordance with an overall eccentric rhythm. (The film's main disappointment is that it would benefit from more running time to allow things to stew a bit longer, especially in the second half.) The character work is choice, from the moment Tom Bower, James Gammon, and Timothy Spall step into view as Appaloosa's civic leaders; the director's father Bob Harris contributes a cameo as a mellifluous-tongued circuit judge, and an age-thickened Lance Henriksen turns up midfilm as gunman Ring Shelton, trailing affability and menace. In collaboration with Dances With Wolves cameraman Dean Semler, Harris sets up shots and scenes in such a way that we often see into and out of Appaloosa's various buildings simultaneously, to excellent dramatic and atmospheric effect, and there's a thrillingly vertical dynamics to a scene involving a train at an isolated water stop. The action is lethal when it needs to be, but never dwelt upon. "That was over quick," Hitch observes after one gun battle. Cole's response says it all: "Everybody could shoot." --Richard T. Jameson
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