Ed Harris’ flawed Western arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray tomorrow.
Actor Ed Harris’ sophomore directorial effort Appaloosa continues the deconstructionist tradition of Western films that began in earnest with Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. But even though it lacks the self-indulgence of other, inferior films of the genre, Appaloosa nonetheless remains a disappointing film thanks to a flawed script and poor directing choices.
The story is certainly steeped in vintage Western tradition, at least on the surface: the marshal of the titular town is murdered by Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons), an amoral rancher with connections reaching to the highest levels of authority. The townspeople hire professional gunmen Virgil Cole (Harris) and his partner/protégé Everett Hitch (Mortensen) to step in and restore law and order. Hot on their heels, a beguiling young widow named Ally French (Renee Zellweger) arrives in town and steals Virgil’s heart. But Ally very quickly proves less than faithful to Virgil and all too willing to trade herself to the alpha male du jour. Despite his repeated humiliations, Virgil cannot bring himself to leave her, prompting Everett to take drastic measures to protect his friend, measures which ultimately tear the partners asunder.
Harris’s fingerprints are all over this film. Besides starring and directing, he adapted the screenplay with Robert Knott from a book by Spenser and Jesse Stone novelist Robert Parker. In translating Parker’s novel for the screen, Harris and Knott were apparently forced to condense a fair amount of characterization, leaving an economized script that teases plotlines and details without ever really exploring them. An early scene hints at Virgil’s suppressed rage and insecurity, but the matter is never explained or allowed to develop. Similarly, Harris fequently focuses on the fear and anxiety of a gentle-hearted ranch hand (Gabriel Marantz) who testifies against Bragg, then drops the character entirely once he cannot advance the storyline further. These and other tangents produce a schizophrenic effect that is only amplified by bizarre intrusions of inappropriate musical selections. And in getting only the major story beats, the audience is left with a skeleton that doesn’t quite explain the lure of the story in the first place.
Most troubling, however, is the film’s barely contained misogyny. Except for a couple of nondescript servant women, Appaloosa contains only two female characters: Ally and a prostitute (Ariadna Gil) who seems to enjoy pitting Everett against his friend’s lover. Both of these women are inherently untrustworthy, if not outright scheming – a sharp contrast to the friendship between Virgil and Everett that is built on mutual admiration and trust. The two men even show unconditional respect to their enemies, including a fellow mercenary (played by a thoroughly unrecognizable Lance Henriksen) who ultimately betrays Virgil for profit. The subtext seems to be that both men and women plot against each other, but men at least can rely on their friends. Harris even punctuates this theme and the film as a whole by singing “You’ll Never Leave My Heart”, a shockingly vitriolic little ditty that plays over the film’s closing credits.
On the other hand, Appaloosa mercifully eschews the cynical brutality characteristic of so many other films of the modern Western genre. The Wild West must have been a period of unimaginable hardship, and many contemporary filmmakers apparently feel that the best way to convey such adversity is by viciously subjecting good people to wanton violence and suffering. (James Mangold’s ghoulish remake of 3:10 to Yuma or, on a somewhat related note, Anthony Minghella’s Cold Mountain). But Harris smartly avoids such laziness, and instead relies on setting and mood to depict the isolation of the frontier. Andrew Dominik took a similarly classy approach in last year’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; while it’s hard to imagine any film achieving the intensity of that picture’s atmospheric bleakness, Appaloosa’s windswept locales and grizzled players prove that desperation is more effectively conveyed through subtlety than bombast.
Not surprisingly, veteran actor Harris coaxes equally subtle and compelling performances from his A-list cast, transferring at least a portion of the characters’ unspoken motivations through nuance. Harris himself portrays Virgil Cole as capable of ruthlessness, but more often amiable, awkward and utterly and embarrassingly powerless before the object of his undeserved affection. In that respect, Virgil shares much more in common with Philip Carey, the protagonist of W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, than with any archetypal Western hero. Such a truly three-dimensional character shows the completion of the evolution of the Western away from the genre’s one-dimensional roots. The script isn’t as generous to Mortensen though, and while it’s a solid performance the King of All Men really doesn’t do very much except stand around and look cool and noble. Zellweger once again plays the sharp point of a romantic triangle, but unlike her character in this spring’s Leatherheads Ally relies on coquetry and flattery to get by rather than wit and moxie. Jeremy Irons is in his element as an oily bastard you can’t help but like, but Marantz’s brief moments of resolve and barely contained terror provide the film’s most memorable performance.
A fair and by no means poorly acted film, Appaloosa perhaps suffers from improbably high expectations over the re-teaming of stars Harris and Mortensen (last seen together in 2005’s A History of Violence). If the film had starred less distinguished actors, audiences probably wouldn’t think twice, writing it off as a decent yet disposable yarn. But with two such charismatic actors in the forefront, one expects something more than just “pretty good.” Given that it’s only Harris’s second time out as a director (after 2000’s Pollock), we’ll hope that he and Mortensen reteam again with a script that challenges them and the audience alike.
- Stephen Kabel
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