Thank you for checking out our Appaloosa review.
The General Idea
Synopsis From IMDB: When Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch arrive in Appaloosa, they find a town suffering at the hands of a rancher named Randall Bragg that means to own everything in it, and who has already left the city Marshall and one of his deputies dead. Cole and Hitch are used to cleaning up after scavengers, but this one raises the stakes by playing not by the rules, but with emotion. Cole and Hitch are hired to save the town from Bragg, but a young attractive widow arrives to complicate matters.
The Good
Ed Harris (Virgil Cole), Vitgo Morgensen (Everett Hitch) and Jeremy Irons (Randall Bragg) all had characters that were quality. Bragg is a well educated lawless man, Everett is a gunman who doesn’t care much for law, but simply uses his status as deputy as a legal means to ply his trade. (Virgil Cole is a man who brings his own commandments with him and imposes the cleansing wrath of law and order from one town to the next.
Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch have a very good Master/Apprenticeship relationship that is touched on some, but never enough. The scenes where these two men were talking alone were some of the best moments of this film. I think it would have been wise for them to wallow in this relationship more than they did.
There was a courtroom scene that was probably my favorite in the film. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but the judge delivers a great line that involves the phrase “while the bees are in the butter”. I love me a catchy adage.
The Bad
The score for this film was horrible. It was like an easy listening jazz/country hybrid that was very out of place and extremely off-putting.
I am not opposed to spouses and lovers being in westerns. But when the film continually spends time dealing with relationship problems and the hero’s desire to work them out – all of a sudden we have something that feels like a bad soap opera. I will admit, the first time Virgil Cole bitches about getting hell for not being home enough – I thought it was funny; I also thought that it would be the last scene of its kind.
Allison French (Renée Zellweger) and her troubled relationships became far too central to the story and as a result everything cool about this western was watered down. That may have been the point of the story – but it sucked.
This film skips along without building tension. Problems seem to be solved a scene or three after the problem is introduced (for the good guys and the bad) and we never get a chance to feel the tension or heaviness of the situation. A showdown should have you at the edge of your seat; this didn’t happened in Appaloosa, because the set up never simmered.
Overall
This was a very disappointing Western. Sadly, if the same characters were in a different film, I think we could’ve had something that was enjoyable. Out of 10, I would give Appaloosa an 4.
