Review of Appaloosa (2008) by Kenneth L — 25 Aug 2010

People keep saying the Western is dead, but every now and then you get a nice, decent one like this. The story is good; it has a few interesting twists, though it does kind of end anti-climactically. The acting is mostly very strong: Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen both do terrific jobs of seeming like they really belong in the 19th-century American West.

The movie smartly shows us both how Harris's character does fulfill many of the traits of the archetypal Western hero, and yet how he also is quite naive about certain things. Mortensen's character mostly observes Harris's, and understands him quite well.

Jeremy Irons gives a typically good Jeremy Irons villain performance. Reneé Zellweger is probably the weakest link in the cast, but she's ok. The cinematography is excellent: this is what a Western movie these days should look like.

There aren't really any big action scenes: what gunfights there are are over within seconds. It doesn't really reinvent the Western, just take a lot of its familiar elements and add a little bit new to them (which is a perfectly fine thing to do, I think).