Appaloosa has flea-bitten varmints, saloons, whores, guns-a-blazin' showdowns and a bromance to boot.
If you hadn't guessed, pardner, it's a western.
And not no high-falutin' epic neither with snoozing passages of pastoral cinematography and gun-slingers who cry and sulk when they should just shut up and shoot.
Does it ring true? Sure, if by true you mean as authentic as an episode of Gunsmoke -- I half-expected Miss Kitty to start calling for Marshal Dillon -- but really, is that so wrong?
How can you not appreciate a movie that leaves you craving chewing tobacco and your very own spittoon?
There's not a whiff of meditative revisionism, lofty ambiguity or flinty grandeur. In some circles, that's a compliment.
Ed Harris, who also directs, and Viggo Mortensen star as Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, taciturn guns-for-hire who roam the frontier of 1882 New Mexico, meting out law and order for whoever will foot their bill.
If most Hollywood mercenaries are forever grappling with their consciences and considering a career change, neither Cole nor Hitch are terribly conflicted about what they do, viewing it as merely an acceptable alternative to working in a mine.
Moreover, they're mannered, dapper and semi-literate; in this environment, that almost makes them sophisticated.
However, they meet their match -- in both elegance and savagery -- in well-bred but viciously-tempered rancher Randall Bragg (a sneering Jeremy Irons), who murdered Appaloosa's last sheriff and has the town pinned down by fear.
If apprehending Briggs wasn't enough of a pain, Cole and Hitch's heretofore simple lives are intractably complicated by the arrival of Allison French (Renee Zellweger), a widow who warms to Cole almost as soon as she steps off the train platform. Sparks fly.
So does lead.
If much of this sounds familiar -- like every other oater you've heard of concerning rough-hewn renegades battling corrupt, powerful politicos -- Appaloosa, based on Robert B. Parker's novel, is elevated by its cast and an off-kilter sense of humour that sharply undercuts the frontier brutality.
Consider the blossoming relationship between the inscrutable Allison and the hapless, love-struck Cole.
When Cole tells Hitch he'll never be as good as he is because Hitch "has feelings," the question is raised: If Cole is with Allison, how much of a future does he have in this heartless line of work?
Throughout, the repartee between Harris and Mortensen never feels less than broken-in and believable.
At one point during the moments prior to a confrontation with a pair of villains -- including the inestimable Lance Henriksen -- Cole and Hitch drift into a conversation about, not the logistics of survival, but their thorny romantic entanglements.
Taking a bullet is the easy part.
Appaloosa may not re-invent the genre, but it's the most convincing argument I've seen in years -- better than 3:10 to Yuma and Open Range -- that it doesn't have to be.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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