Feelings get you killed.
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?
Genre(s): Crime, Drama, Western
Runtime: 115 minutes
Rating: 6.9/10 (17,579 votes)
Release Date: 5 September 2008
Country: USA
Languages: English
Company: New Line Cinema
Sound: DTS, Dolby Digital, SDDS
MPAA: Rated R for some violence and language.
Director(s): Ed Harris
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Producer(s):
Sam Brown - executive producer
Caldecot Chubb - executive producer (as Cotty Chubb)
Toby Emmerich - executive producer
Ed Harris - producer
Kathryn Himoff - associate producer
Robert Knott - producer
Michael London - executive producer
Ginger Sledge - producer
Candy Trabuco - associate producer (as Candy Tabucco)
Janice Williams - associate producer
Michael Disco - executive producer (uncredited)
Writer(s):
Robert Knott - (screenplay) &
Ed Harris - (screenplay)
Robert B. Parker - (novel) (as Robert Parker)
Cast:
Ed Harris - Virgil Cole
Viggo Mortensen - Everett Hitch
Renée Zellweger - Allison French
Jeremy Irons - Randall Bragg
Timothy Spall - Phil Olson
Tom Bower - Abner Raines
James Gammon - Earl May
Ariadna Gil - Katie
Benjamin Rosenshein - Town Boy
Cerris Morgan-Moyer - Tilda
Music: Jeff Beal
Sam Brown - executive producer
Caldecot Chubb - executive producer (as Cotty Chubb)
Toby Emmerich - executive producer
Ed Harris - producer
Kathryn Himoff - associate producer
Robert Knott - producer
Michael London - executive producer
Ginger Sledge - producer
Candy Trabuco - associate producer (as Candy Tabucco)
Janice Williams - associate producer
Michael Disco - executive producer (uncredited)
Writer(s):
Robert Knott - (screenplay) &
Ed Harris - (screenplay)
Robert B. Parker - (novel) (as Robert Parker)
Cast:
Ed Harris - Virgil Cole
Viggo Mortensen - Everett Hitch
Renée Zellweger - Allison French
Jeremy Irons - Randall Bragg
Timothy Spall - Phil Olson
Tom Bower - Abner Raines
James Gammon - Earl May
Ariadna Gil - Katie
Benjamin Rosenshein - Town Boy
Cerris Morgan-Moyer - Tilda
Music: Jeff Beal
Posted on: September 3, 2008
June 22nd, 2009
If you like westerns you will like this flick. Appaloosa was a truewestern. Probably one of the trues westerns in recent years. Mostmodern westerns seem to forget the action and the characters. I loveVigo's character. He says almost nothing, but his point is always made.My only complaint is Zellweger. I normally don't mind her in movies.But dear lord was she annoying as hell in this flick! Looking back Iwish Vigo had talked more and Zellweger talked less. Ed Harris is ofcourse fantastic. He always pulls off a great performance and Ironscounteracts Harris with a great antagonist villain. All the charactersare very well developed and the plot is quite good.
June 30th, 2009
Appaloosa changed the way I look at life.
The film was simply about two lawmen performing the tasks that theirlife events necessitated. With no climax and no glamor, this uniquework effectively becomes unabashedly didactic and embodies the natureof the human condition: we do what we have to do.
Its Western setting adds to its charm and raw beauty. It really offersan unparalleled motion picture experience. Saying that it is myfavorite movie doesn't even do the film justice. It was just sowonderfully done.
Plus Ed Harris pulled off an amazing acting, directing, writing, andproducing feat. Virgil Cole is the quintessential ne'er do well bad assWestern marshal and the shine on this gem.
July 7th, 2009
…being an admirer of Ed Harris's work over the years, but honestly, Ijust can't bring myself to call this one a keeper. It's a decent pieceof genre entertainment, certainly worth a watch, a worthy notch inHarris's directorial belt, but does it join the ranks of classics like"Red River," "The Unforgiven," or "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly?"Sadly, no.
Based on the novel by the immensely popular mystery writer, Robert B.Parker, with a maiden screenplay by actor Robert "Pollack" Knott andHarris himself (who also produced and directed), "Appaloosa" tells thetale of two professional lawmen/gunslingers (Harris and Viggo "I'm notAragorn, I just played him" Mortensen) and their efforts to bringjustice to a town in late 19th century New Mexico. Those efforts centeron delivering a bad man (Jeremy "Damage" Irons) his due, but things getmessy (of course) when an opportunistic widow (Renée "Nurse Betty"Zellweger) and then an old nemesis (Lance "Pumpkinhead" Henriksen) showup. Everything is (of course) resolved: the bad guys are punished, thegood guys redeemed, the town saved from lawless exploitation, and ourhero gets the girl (for what she's worth). Hurrah! Unfortunately, muchof this is so generic and plays out so formulaically that it fails toregister on a visceral level, possibly because there's so little backstory to the characters, back story that I'm fairly sure the novelprobably provided. Harris's professional vigilante is mostlyunremarkable; it's only his occasional vocabulary difficulties thatdistinguish him from scores of characters cut from the same cardboard.Zellweger's weak-kneed bimbo suffers from lack of depth as well as ahorrendous make-up job that the lady's natural vivacity and appealsimply cannot penetrate. Henriksen is damn near unrecognizable, whichmay or may not be a good thing, Jeremy Irons seems to be intake-the-paycheck mode, and even Mortensen, whose acting I admire agreat deal (along with Harris) has only an oddball beard and an 8-gaugeshotgun to distinguish him from the bulk of his resumé of even-temperedleading men. It's not that the dialog is terrible, or even the mostlypedestrian plot. Dean "Dances With Wolves" Semler's camera-work is attimes quite gorgeous, and Jeff "Pollock" Beal's score is reasonablyevocative and restrained. The production design, art design, costuming,and so on seem nicely attentive to detail and historical veracity andso forth. It's all just…well, another example of Sturgeon'sRevelation. In one eye and out the other, which is a shame. It's ashame that so much talent could be so…forgettable.
Your mileage, of course, may well vary. "Appaloosa" is still worth awatch, don't get me wrong. Just don't expect anything out of theordinary, and you won't be disappointed.
July 8th, 2009
First, I don't think Renee Zellweger is that great, so any actresscould have filled her role with no loss.
Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen were first rate as the "town tamers".Their interplay is at the heart of the movie. Both performances aresubtle and understated. Jeremy Irons makes a major contribution.
The film definitely contains violence and gunfire, but not as in the"action film" genre of blazing machine guns and exploding cars(or inthis case buckboard wagons.) There is no flash, no nonsense, nogimmicks.
This has got to be one of the best westerns made in the last couple ofdecades.