Appaloosa

Sometimes as a filmgoer you’re struck by the synchronicity of things. I’m sure I would have had a different reaction to Appaloosa (2008) had I not also seen Warlock (1959) a couple of weeks ago. As it is, it seems to me that this is, at least at the start, essentially the same movie: a town tired of being plagued by a gang of cowboys employ a Marshall from, who works with a man who has been his friend for many years and who exists by his own set of laws. Later the film changes into something very different and we can see echoes from The Wild Bunch (1969) (a train which stops by a water cooler tower is subject to a raid, a gunfight happens in a Mexican town square). The film directed by and starring Ed Harris and also Vigo Mortensen, Renee Zellweger and Jeremy Irons is well acted and has an interesting theme. But the pace of it is wrong and the plot becomes too wandering and sporadic. A much better modern western is Kevin Costner’s Open Range (2003), which has an excellent performance by Robert Duvall and a surprising amount of tension for such a simple story.