The best western fans can expect from Hollywood is an adequate oater per year.
In 2007, genre fans got a double dose — “3:10 to Yuma” and “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.”
This year they’ll have to settle for “Appaloosa,” director Ed Harris’ no muss, no fuss western that’s a perfectly good example of all that’s right with the genre.
It just won’t be enough to bring westerns back from the commercial precipice.
“Appaloosa” stars Harris, who also co-wrote the screenplay, as a gunslinger named Virgil out to bring peace to a small town. Virgil, along with his partner-in-gunslinging Everett (Viggo Mortensen), try to arrest a thug named Bragg (Jeremy Irons) whose goons are making Appaloosa a place even “Deadwood” types would fear to tread.
These lawmen make their own rules, a juicy theme that gets introduced and then left behind in a barroom spittoon.
Virgil and Everett can handle the likes of Bragg, but their steely exteriors melt when a purty widow named Ally (Renee Zellweger) sashays into town.
“Appaloosa” boasts sharp dialogue and a tense, but believable kinship between the male leads. But the film’s episodic nature tends to wrap mini-storylines up before they can rally toward an epic conclusion.
For all its storytelling smarts, “Appaloosa” reminds us the western needs another Clint Eastwood type to save the genre from extinction.
(Photo: Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris are assigned to clean up a dirty town in “Appaloosa.”)
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