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After falling out of vogue for a while, westerns are suddenly all the rage. These days, it seems that every Hollywood tough guy is donning a cowboy hat—from Christian Bale and Russell Crowe in 3:10 to Yuma to Brad Pitt in The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford and even Josh Brolin in the Oscar-winning updated western, No Country For Old Men. It seems, though, that even tough guys fall in love from time to time—or at least they do in Ed Harris’s new western, Appaloosa.
Director Harris also stars as Virgil Cole, a hired gun who’s called in to restore order in the Old West town of Appaloosa. Appaloosa’s marshal and his two deputies went missing after paying a visit to wealthy rancher and alleged outlaw Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons), so the town’s leaders decide to hire Cole and his trusted friend and sidekick, Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen), to take over.
Not long after arriving in Appaloosa, the new marshal and deputy meet Allison French (Renée Zellweger), a beautiful young widow who’s new in town. Allie makes Virgil start to question his life as a traveling lawman—but he soon discovers that his feelings for her could lead to his downfall.
Appaloosa might just be the girliest western I’ve ever seen. Walking into the theater, I expected two hours of outlaws and lawmen and gunfights. Instead, I got matchmaking and romance and curtain fabrics. And despite the fact that I’m a girl, I was still pretty disappointed—because instead of being sweet and heart-warming, this Old West romance is mostly a mix of surly, tough-guy awkwardness and strange, pre-pubescent melodrama. After Virgil and Everett first meet Allie, for instance, Everett ends up escorting her to her hotel. He then returns to Virgil, and the two men have a long, uncomfortable discussion about what Allie asked and/or said about Virgil—and what Everett told her. And later, after Virgil and Allie decide to build a little house together, they quickly turn into the stereotypical old married couple—with Allie nagging that Virgil doesn’t care about their house because he spends more time with his prisoners at the jail than he does with her.
Had the romance between Virgil and Allie been merely a subplot, it may have helped to give the characters depth. And with a great cast like this one, Appaloosa could have been a spectacular western. Instead, the romance just feels so out of place that it often makes Appaloosa feel more like a parody than a serious western. Sure, the movie eventually seems to suggest that a real man would be better off sticking with the occasional company of whores (or no women at all)—but, by then, the damage has already been done.
In the end, the fact that there’s more kissin’ than shootin’ will disappoint the tough guys in the audience, and the fact that the romance is flat and awkward will disappoint the womenfolk. So it’s probably best just to let this one ride off toward the horizon.
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