Movie review: 'Appaloosa'

Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris in "Appaloosa" (Credit: Lorey Sebastian/Warner Bros.)

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2 1/2 stars (out of four)

After this crummy  week for American capitalism, people might be in the mood for the wide-open spaces and stripped-down narrative objectives of director Ed Harris’ “Appaloosa.” It’s less a western than a loping buddy picture, based on Robert B. Parker’s novel, that happens to be set in the territory of New Mexico, 1882.

Harris plays Virgil Cole, whose friend and backup, Everett Hitch, is portrayed by Viggo Mortensen. They’re guns for hire, in “the peacekeeping bidness.” A ruthless rancher (Jeremy Irons, cast against type and hidden behind a full set of whiskers) effectively runs the town of Appaloosa as he pleases, killing off the marshal when it best suits him, going about his business. Enter Cole and Hitch. Order’s restored, uneasily, until the appearance of piano player and hot-to-trot widow Allison French. She’s played by Renee Zellweger, and as this coy bundle of availability squeezes into Cole’s life, she keeps a side door open for whoever else tickles her fancy.

While “Appaloosa” has its share of revenge killings, there’s a fair amount of leisurely conversation between Cole and Hitch as they regard their newfound town and sort through the mysteries of life, women and a universe where a lout like Irons’ rancher can start out a lawless varmint and turn into a respectable man of business. Harris co-wrote the screenplay with Robert Knott, and while the story’s locale is meant to be dusty and sparsely populated, it is not, I think, meant to be as two-dimensionally fakey as it seems on screen. I admired “Pollack,” Harris’s directorial debut, and I enjoyed much of “Appaloosa,” but Harris has yet to figure out how to energize a scene visually. He’s not going for anything fancy, but his compositions are more functional than compelling.

Mortensen comes off best. Not only does he seem like a genuine artifact of the late 19th Century, his plain-spoken charisma is well-suited to the western genre. Irons is effective as well, even with a wobbly dialect, and unlike so many frontier adversaries, this one becomes more interesting and dangerously respectable as “Appaloosa” winds its way to the close. In the end what you have is a mixed bag. The conception of the Zellweger character seems way off, as written and as acted. But with or without that fantastic mustache, Mortensen should certainly do another western, soon. Preferably he should do one with a real sense of danger to go along with all the neat, tidy, highfalutin’ honor and decency.

mjphillips@tribune.com

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