Never Mind the Pollocks

By ROBERT NOTT I

Never mind the Pollocks

Robert Nott I The New Mexican

Appaloosa, gals-and-gunfire oater, rated R, Regal Stadium 14,

424-6296, 3 chiles

Appaloosa, shot in New Mexico and based on Robert B. Parker’s novel of the same name, opens with hoofbeats. The only thing that might top that for Western film fans is a burst of gunfire, which quickly follows. Appaloosa closes with a man riding into the sunset – - an apt ending. In between you get a passel of shootin’, chasin’, philosophizin’, and lovin’. The film is a solid homage to a genre that just won’t head out to pasture, though the exit gate has been open for a while — since at least the

mid-1970s, when John Wayne hung up his spurs for good.

Still, what keeps Appaloosa from achieving greatness is its reliance on timeworn cliches and characters. It steals, borrows, or leans on stock situations from earlier Westerns — including Dodge City (1939), Warlock (1959), Ride Lonesome (1959), High Noon (1952), The Hired Hand (1971), and Death of a Gunfighter (1969) — for some of its most effective moments.

The good guys are Virgil Cole (Ed Harris) and Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen). The bad guy is Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons), a rancher who dabbles in crime and has some odd connection to President Chester Arthur. He has about two dozen gunmen at his call, and they run the roost known as Appaloosa, New Mexico. The town councilmen, fed up with playing chickens, employ Virgil and Hitch — a pair of marshals-for-hire — to protect them. That’s your plot.

Oh, and there’s a woman. (Stories like this generally have one, and why this one doesn’t have more than one when it has two male leads is beyond me.) She’s Allison French (Renee Zellweger), who comes to town with a winning smile, piano-playing hands, and a dollar to her name. Virgil falls for her almost at once, though he’s not good with small talk. “You ain’t a whore, are you?” he asks about three sentences into their first chat. She’s not much better at conversation, replying, “How long you been killin’ for a living?” She clai love Virgil but makes a play for Everett shortly after, and that’s where some of the philosophizin’ comes in.

When the shooting happens, it happens, and then it’s done. There’s no excessive dialogue before the pistols start firing, no running around and hiding behind water troughs and nonsense like that, no hitting the human targets with every shot. Still, a lot of people get bullets in them, and they don’t have much to say afterward.

The characters look like they need baths but are not so dirty that you don’t want to be around them. The heroes load their guns after every engagement and have their shirts laundered so they can change them after a day of bloodshed. Timid men try to be heroes, while brave men worry about getting shot if they say the wrong thing.

The script is by Robert Knott (no relation), and it’s to the point most of the time, though it meanders a bit in the middle. You end up liking the characters without really getting to know most of them. But almost everything seems realistic, though you might wonder why our heroes await an Apache attack in an open valley, apparently unconcerned as their enemy takes up positions in the hills around them.

Appaloosa is directed by Harris, and you have to give him credit: it moves, and the acting is first-rate all the way, right down to the minor players — like Bob Harris as a law-abiding judge, Gabriel Marantz as a frightened witness to murder, and Rex Linn as a helpful sheriff. Ariadna Gil is particularly good as a saloon girl who calmly and confidently dispenses common-sense advice. Lance Henriksen gets a nice turn as a charming killer who won’t cross certain moral lines, and Santa Fean Luce Rains enjoys a bit of dark, knockabout comedy with Harris.

I remember Harris portraying a believable cowboy in a made-for- television version of Riders of the Purple Sage in 1996. He’s at home in the genre: he knows how to wear the hat, sits comfortably in the saddle, and handles the six-gun well. Mortensen is even better in the most fully realized characterization in the film. His quiet lawman sees things nobody else can see in the actions of others, and you get the sense he was born ready for the day when hell would ride into town. But he’s a sad man, too, well aware that his way of life is ending for a number of reasons, including his partner’s infatuation with a frontier widow. If you like Westerns, go see this one, because it’s pretty good, and we may not see another of its kind for a long time. <

Originally published by ROBERT NOTT I THE NEW MEXICAN.

(c) 2008 The Santa Fe New Mexican. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.