Appaloosa
No, I Won't Go See The Chihuahua Movie!
I finally got out to the movies the other night. The Ed Harris/Viggo Mortenson western Appaloosa was finally released, and I'm not one to miss a western flick.
It's based on the novel of the same name by Robert Parker. If you're a fan of the Spenser detective novels, you know Parker's work. He does just as well with a horse opera as he does with a Boston P.I.
Overall, it's a pretty good yarn. Harris & Mortenson play Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, two itinerant gunmen who contract with frontier towns to establish law & order.
Jeremy Irons plays the lead Black Hat, and there's a scattering of other famous faces in the cast as well. Keep a sharp eye out for James Gammon and Lance Henrikson. One's lost so much weight and the other's gained so much, they're nearly unrecognizable.
The producers strove for an old-fashioned western, free of revisionism or political subtext. The bad guys are very, very bad, and the good guys are not much better. They also worked very hard on authenticity. The costuming and weaponry were first-rate, and even the hairstyles were what you see in old daguerrotypes and tintypes of the period.
Gunfights are pretty authentic, too. These aren't long drawn-out affairs, with Peckinpah slo-mo and multiple angles to show spurting blood. No, it's a slow face-off, then BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM and then there's dead people lying in the dusty street. The quick & the dead, as it were.
There's a couple of problems with the film. The dialogue was masked from time to time by the background noise or the soundtrack. That might have been the fault of the theater, though. Also, there's a significant change in the plot dealing with the Indian encounter. I understand why they made the change, since they swapped locales from the northern plains to New Mexico. Apaches aren't Kiowa, after all. Still, I liked the novel's resolution of that encounter much better.
The biggest problem is the female lead, Miss Potato Head. To have to listen to the main actors repeat (numerous times) how pretty she is was just not right. Renee Zellweger is about as pretty as a festering boil pulsating on your taint.
She looked pretty much like this throughout the film, albeit with red hair and a tan:
So, if you can stand seeing Ed Harris make kissyface with Miss Potato Head, you'll be OK with that part of the film. The rest of it is a whole lot better!
I finally got out to the movies the other night. The Ed Harris/Viggo Mortenson western Appaloosa was finally released, and I'm not one to miss a western flick.
It's based on the novel of the same name by Robert Parker. If you're a fan of the Spenser detective novels, you know Parker's work. He does just as well with a horse opera as he does with a Boston P.I.
Overall, it's a pretty good yarn. Harris & Mortenson play Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, two itinerant gunmen who contract with frontier towns to establish law & order.
Jeremy Irons plays the lead Black Hat, and there's a scattering of other famous faces in the cast as well. Keep a sharp eye out for James Gammon and Lance Henrikson. One's lost so much weight and the other's gained so much, they're nearly unrecognizable.
The producers strove for an old-fashioned western, free of revisionism or political subtext. The bad guys are very, very bad, and the good guys are not much better. They also worked very hard on authenticity. The costuming and weaponry were first-rate, and even the hairstyles were what you see in old daguerrotypes and tintypes of the period.
Gunfights are pretty authentic, too. These aren't long drawn-out affairs, with Peckinpah slo-mo and multiple angles to show spurting blood. No, it's a slow face-off, then BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM and then there's dead people lying in the dusty street. The quick & the dead, as it were.
There's a couple of problems with the film. The dialogue was masked from time to time by the background noise or the soundtrack. That might have been the fault of the theater, though. Also, there's a significant change in the plot dealing with the Indian encounter. I understand why they made the change, since they swapped locales from the northern plains to New Mexico. Apaches aren't Kiowa, after all. Still, I liked the novel's resolution of that encounter much better.
The biggest problem is the female lead, Miss Potato Head. To have to listen to the main actors repeat (numerous times) how pretty she is was just not right. Renee Zellweger is about as pretty as a festering boil pulsating on your taint.
She looked pretty much like this throughout the film, albeit with red hair and a tan:
So, if you can stand seeing Ed Harris make kissyface with Miss Potato Head, you'll be OK with that part of the film. The rest of it is a whole lot better!
posted by El Capitan | 11:58 AM
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