Pun Salad

One of the DVD extras reveals the movie's origin: on holiday in Ireland, Ed Harris read the Robert B. Parker novel Appaloosa, and just decided to go ahead and make the movie. He directs, stars, produced, and has a screenplay credit.

Now that's a fan.

Harris plays Virgil Cole, and Viggo Mortensen plays his partner, Everett Hitch; together, they make a living from travelling from town to town, getting hired by the locals to put down any and all slimy black-hatted evildoers killing and abusing innocents. They're very good at that.

Things develop a little differently when they try to implement this simple recipe in the town of Appaloosa. The bad guy is bad enough: Randall Bragg (played by Jeremy Irons, not bothering to drop his accent) has killed the previous town marshal and two deputies. Virgil and Everett start methodically harassing and shooting members of Bragg's gang, their standard operating procedure. But a complication arrives on the train: widow Allie French, played by Renée Zellweger, captivates Cole. This complicates the Virgil/Everett relationship, and (soon) it intrudes into the effort to bring Bragg to justice.

I've watched a lot of adaptations of Robert B. Parker's work (the Spenser series, TV movies based on Spenser and Jesse Stone), but this seems to be the closest Hollywood has come to "getting Parker right." The dialogue between Virgil and Everett is terse and understated, communicating volumes, reflecting each character's deep understanding of the other. So: good job, Ed Harris.