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List Price: $19.98 | | Label: New Line Home Video
Salesrank: 303
Released: January 13, 2009 |
| Our Price: $1.13 |
| Used Price: $1.25 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
In Marshal Virgil Cole and deputy Everett Hitchs line of work, you shoot quick, you shoot clean, and you reload straightaway. No remorse. No looking back. No feelings. Feelings get you killed. Paired as rivals in A History of Violence, Ed Harris (who also directs, produces and co-scripts) and Viggo Mortensen stand together as longtime friends and for-hire peacekeepers Cole and Hitch in this character-driven, bullet-hard Western based on Robert B. Parkers novel. Blood will spill in the town called Appaloosa.
Description of Appaloosa:
The Western has been an endangered species, on and off, for something like 40 years now. Welcome to Appaloosa, Ed Harris's film of the Robert B. Parker novel--first because it exists at all, but even more because Harris as star, director, and co-screenwriter (with Robert Knott) has managed to bring it to the screen with no hint of fuss or strain, as if the making of no-nonsense, copiously pleasurable Westerns were still something Hollywood did with regularity. Harris plays Virgil Cole, one of those ace gunfighter-lawmen whose name need only be mentioned to make a saloon go still. Cole and his shotgun-toting partner Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen) accept a commission to enforce law and order in the New Mexico town of Appaloosa. That basically means protect it from rapacious rancher Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons, looking right at home on the range), who murdered the previous town marshal like swatting a fly. Life becomes complicated when, about the time Bragg has been jailed to await trial, a fancy-dressing piano player calling herself Mrs. French (Renée Zellweger) steps down off the train. Cole commences to have feelings, and as he ruefully reminds Hitch, "Feelin's can get ya killed."
In his second directorial effort (following the 2000 biopic Pollock), Harris takes his cue from novelist Parker's often deadpan-comic touch, allowing action and character to accumulate in accordance with an overall eccentric rhythm. (The film's main disappointment is that it would benefit from more running time to allow things to stew a bit longer, especially in the second half.) The character work is choice, from the moment Tom Bower, James Gammon, and Timothy Spall step into view as Appaloosa's civic leaders; the director's father Bob Harris contributes a cameo as a mellifluous-tongued circuit judge, and an age-thickened Lance Henriksen turns up midfilm as gunman Ring Shelton, trailing affability and menace. In collaboration with Dances With Wolves cameraman Dean Semler, Harris sets up shots and scenes in such a way that we often see into and out of Appaloosa's various buildings simultaneously, to excellent dramatic and atmospheric effect, and there's a thrillingly vertical dynamics to a scene involving a train at an isolated water stop. The action is lethal when it needs to be, but never dwelt upon. "That was over quick," Hitch observes after one gun battle. Cole's response says it all: "Everybody could shoot." --Richard T. Jameson
Appaloosa Reviews:
horrible 
2009-11-25 - This was the first film in years that was so bad I turned it off. I watched over an hour but it did not improve. I love the actors but the story has been recycled over and again and the direction was questionable. If you can rent it first, if you love it buy it and say my review wasn't helpful. Either way go watch 3:10 to Yuma.
A western for grown-ups.It's not about the guns, horses or bullets. It's about friendship, sex and, ultimately, love. 
2009-11-21 - Be warned right now - this movie review is mostly one giant spoiler. Here's the non-spoiler parts right up front. This is a movie that strives to look authentic. The two main characters have known each other for years and have no need for a lot of dialogue - they know each other well, they know each other's habits and their conversations are spare.
Many reviewers have missed the whole point of the movie. It was not about two buddies/lawmen bringing peace to a town, although that does happen (mostly) and the gun fights are quick, brutal and ugly. The movie is about what happens when such a partnership is disrupted by a woman. Look at the DVD cover art and you can see it symbolically represented - there is Renee Zellweger standing between Mortensen and Harris.
****Spoiler alert****The rest of the review is just full of spoilers******
In this case, the woman is a pathetic, despicable thing. The movie comes from a Robert B. Parker book and his books are full of people (mostly women, but not always) that claim to be in love but really they are psychologically needy and act out sexually in strange, disruptive ways.
There are four main characters in this story: Marshal Virgil Cole, Deputy Everett Hitch, Bragg (a rancher/hotel owner) and Mrs. French, a pathetic woman that leeches onto powerful men out of some deep seeded need that we never quite have explained. Suffice it to say, Mrs. French is a survivor because she uses sex to endear herself to the most powerful man in her immediate area.
Many have misinterpreted (in my opinion, anyway) the "big" fight scene at the end. Here's my take
Hitch kills Bragg, but not to defend the honor of Zelweger character, Mrs. French, because she has none to defend. Instead, it is to restore Cole to his rightful place - top dog. Cole won't do anything about it because he loves Mrs. French. She's the first woman he's ever actually talked to about anything except food, sex or meaningless pleasantries - and he loves her despite her messed up, trampy ways. That is his fatal flaw.
Hitch, out of love as Cole's friend, cannot stand to see Cole shamed by Bragg so he defends Cole. Hitch kills Bragg, but in doing so he is now the top dog, rather than Bragg or Cole. In order for Cole to stay in town with the woman he loves and for that relationship to even exist, Hitch has to leave town. If he stays, Mrs. French will just try to seduce him and the Cole/Mrs. French relationship will end. Also, the Hitch/Cole relationship will end.
So, out of friendship, Cole kills Bragg so that Cole has the chance of keeping the woman he loves, even though it ends the Cole/Hitch relationship. Deputy Hitch sacrifices the friendship in order to give his friend a chance at happiness with Mrs. French. Truly, a beautiful moment, although subtly played.
A Serious and Likable Western in Blu-ray
2009-11-21 - Appaloosa is a serious western with excellent acting and enough gunfighting and tension to keep you interested. Rancher Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons) murders a marshal and deputies who came to arrest killers among his men. The town hires contract marshal Virgil Cole (Ed Harris) and his loyal shotgun-toting partner Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen) to make things right. Widow Renne Zellweger is the recently arrived widow who takes to Harris who reluctantly accepts her flirting and infidelity. I'm not really a fan of Zellweger who tends to play somewhat odd character roles, but she does a worthy job here opposite Harris as a lonely, vulnerable woman desperate for a permanent relationship in the vicious, hard, cruel west. Appaloosa does not have as much gun action as 3:10 to Yuma, but it does have enough character study without the silliness that exists in many westerns, and that is one of it's strengths.
The blu-ray transfer was fine and I appreciated the Special Features section as actor/director Harris and others in the cast discuss making the film and their efforts at recreating the 1880's costumes and sets. Also interesting are the tracks "Scare Easy" by Tom Petty and Mudcrutch, and "You'll Never Leave My Heart" co-written and sung by Harris, that play as the end credits roll.
a somewhat flawed western 
2009-11-08 - In this movie Virgil Cole is a lawman for hire
with his companion , Everett Hitch,who carries an 8 gage shotgun.
They are hired to pacify the town of Appaloosa.
The rich influential Bragg has killed the previous Marshal and his deputies.
When a widow woman enters the picture, things get more complex.
A witness comes forward and Bragg is arrested and tried, but escapes
twice on the way to trial
and finally is pardoned by his friend President Chester A. Arthur.
In Appaloosa things go from bad to worse until a strange conclusion.
This acting is good, but the plot is just kind of basic.
The characterizations are kind of one dimensional, so that
the macho sort of drowns out the feelings that you probably should have for them?
Bad movie with good gunfight scenes 
2009-10-22 - This movie was a disappointment. Ed Harris was not a very good cowboy which was a surprise to me because I usually like his work. Maybe it was his lack of tough guy facial hair or maybe my real problem came down to the character he was playing who had a weakness when it came to women which made him seem weak overall. Viggo did well in his role, but I think both actors were hampered by the story which was a poorly recycled version of High Plains Drifter. Renee Zelweeger was also very annoying. On a positive note, Appaloosa did have realistic gunfight scenes that reminded me of "Open Range."
