Review of Appaloosa (2008) by Liam C — 28 Dec 2013

I've mixed feelings with this film, on the one hand it's a classic western that's well acted and smoothly moving at its own pace but on the other hand it felt muddled with a weak female lead.

For the first 30 minutes I was right at home. I love a good western and the two main leads seemed great, they worked well off each other, spoke like actual humans and acted like regular people. Ed Harris' accent was perfect, in these kind of films, at least in my experience, you can always tell it's an accent but not with Ed Harris.

To be honest there was only one thing that annoyed me with this film, unfortunately it was a huge factor of the film but Renee Zellweger's character really bugged me, one minute she was all over Ed and the next she's all over Hitch and the next she's all over Bragg, was I missing something? Was this supposed to be a big deal? It seemed like it was and I just thought she was someone who just couldn't keep it in her pants (figuratively speaking) she just bugged me.

Virgil doesn't talk to her for one day and she talks to Hitch and she's all 'oh he doesn't love me'? There's also something that is brought up but I don't think it was fully addressed.

Hitch holds Virgil more than he should have and I thought there'd be a unique story to that, I thought some way down the film Hitch was going to say he had feelings for Virgil but I didn't see that happening and I was disappointed.

It's hard to rate this, whenever Allison wasn't on screen I was loving it because the two main leads were just so charismatic to watch, you'd believe they had been friends for years, which is the whole point of the film.

I should give some credit to Jeremy Irons, it's good to see him in a good film again, actually playing a character of worth, he was great. I'd say skip it but I'm not going to tell you what to watch but if you're an Ed Harris fan like I am, you'll give it a watch.