Appaloosa

Appaloosa, a new western from writer/producer/director/star Ed Harris, should be shown in every film class across America.  The film features a lead quarter of Oscar-nominated actors, a classic Western backdrop, action, humor, romance, intrigue, and more– and its one of the worst films I’ve seen in recent memory.  Want to see how bad director/sound mixing/acting/score can wreck a film that should be terrific on paper?  Study Appaloosa!  I’ve been reading all kinds of positive reviews, even from reviewers with whom I usually agree, and I feel like we were watching two different movies.  The film was so disappointingly uneven– there were parts I loved, sequences where I was absolutely riveted.  But moments later, some atrocity always came along to ruin my fun.  Let’s tackle the big issues I mentioned above, and see if we can figure out what mad this stinker so darn stinky.

1. Director — It’s pretty easy to blame a bad film on its director.  The director is the one calling the shots, pulling the entire gestalt together under his vision.  In the case of Appaloosa, Ed Harris’s shortcomings as a director are painfully evident.  To me, it seems that Harris’s big issue is with his decision making.  Had he made a few different choices throughout the production of this film, we might’ve had a whole different movie. From his take selection, to set design, to sound, to make-up, to dialogue, Harris made (in my opinion), the wrong choice over and over again.  I kept thinking to myself, “This is Ed Harris, Viggo Mortenson, and Jeremy Irons in a frickin bad-ass western!  Shouldn’t I be loving this?”  But I wasn’t.

As it stands, this movie feels like two movies smooshed together: the first is our classic Western–Stoic, laconic hero lays down the law to protect a town from the bad guy.  Any part of the movie that fit under this category was terrific.  The films first 30 minutes were particularly riveting, especially for a western fan like myself (ok, I might not be a huge western fan, but I love Deadwood, Silence of the Lambs, The Searchers, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly).  We got some sweeping, wide shots of the beautiful hills and plateaus of the frontier, the set-up for our story and characters was tight, intense, well-paced and yet, felt calm and completely under control.  This tone was spot on, as its essentially the traditional western lawman in a nutshell– fierce, but composed.  In fact, I turned to my viewing buddy on multiple occasions to whisper “This movie is awesome!”  About 30 or so minutes into it, I had to use the restroom, so I turned to my viewing buddy and said, “As soon as the inevitable love interest comes in, I’m going to pee because it’s going to slow down.”  Sure enough, right as I said, the woman, a.k.a. the One Who Ruined The Movie, appeared on-screen.  I left to pee and the movie was never the same again.

2. The Woman — Am I the only one who thinks Renee Zellweger is unappealing?  I loved her ten years ago in Empire Records and Jerry Maguire, and who didn’t?  But look at what this woman’s career has become:Cold Mountain, Chicago, Cinderella Man and now Appaloosa?  Do you really believe she’s worthy of films like these?  I can understand her in lighter fare like Leatherheads or Bridget Jones, but in period dramas?  Really??  These are parts that should be going to Julianne Moore, or Rachel McAdams or somebody else who’s good at acting.  But Zellweger??  She ruins this movie.  Not only with her horribleness, but with her character.  As soon as she enters the picture, the movie flips from sweet western into romantic comedy with some suspense.  That’s right.  I said…

3. Romantic Comedy — The western turns into a romantic comedy!!  Why?!  Why did you do this Ed Harris?  The rest of the film essentially becomes devoted to Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen (who looks like a Hispanic cartoon mouse in a cowboy hat) doing Abbot & Costello riffing dialogue , once-terrifying villain Jeremy Irons as the main source of comic relief, and Zellweger screwing every dude that moves.  What is bold humor doing in this movie?  It’s one thing to have a character or two be naturally funny; Clint Eastwood always got a few organic laughs, right?  Here, each “comedic” moment feels wildly out of place. For example, in one scene, Hitch (Viggo) takes Bragg’s (Irons) horse to use as a peace offering to a potentially threatening Indian tribe.  Instead of letting Hitch ride off silently and nobly, as deputies in a western are supposed to do, director Harris throws on a “button” of having the captive Bragg yell, “Hey, where do you think you’re going with my horse?!”  Groan.

Here’s another example of poor decision-making by Harris: several times throughout the film, Virgil Cole (Harris) tries to use a difficult vocabulary word, and when he can’t remember it, his trusty pal Hitch chimes in with the appropriate term.  Cole is a brilliant lawman, but pretty dumb at everything else.  Fine, that’s the character.  But when you use this device like 7 times, and the 7th time, Cole is like “I’ve got him seq…se…seq…seq…seque…seq…se…seq…what’s the word I’m looking for?” (its “sequestered”), then you’ve crossed from organic character dialogue into pandering for laughs.  To me, forced humor isn’t humor at all, no matter how funny the joke is on paper.  If it isn’t natural, it won’t make me laugh and will probably piss me off.

4. Sound mixing/score– the main theme for this film is awful.  Just terrible.  It sounds like the 3rd trumpet player from Herb Alpert’s Tiajuana Brass Band was hired to write a spoof western theme and wrote did so while he was cracked out on yellow tops (that’s a reference to The Wire, by the way– “I got them red tops! I got them WMD’s!”).  Atrocious.  Furthermore, the sound mixing in this film was abominable.  Do you want to know how many times in my life I’ve complained about sound mixing?  One.  Check this blog– I don’t think I’ve ever even used the phrase before, but the sound mixing in this movie ruined several scenes.  Hitch and Cole would be having a serious conversation in the hotel, and mixed about 10 decibels louder is Renee Zellweger playing song after song from “Beginners Piano Book for the Mentally Challenged.”  How am I supposed to pay attention to a hushed conversation if I’ve got the sound of a blind, one-armed baby playing “baa baa black sheep” on the piano blasting in my ear?  And what’s worse, this happened like four times!  Scene after scene was drowned out by the worst piano playing I’ve ever heard in my life.  It was like they piped in the feed from a 3rd grade piano recital: it was too loud, the song choices infantile and annoying, the playing terrible, and the piano itself sounded trebly and irritating.  And of course, my favorite actress Renee was doing the playing, so that was great too.  Horrible.  Ugh, just horrible.  

5. Acting — Aside from Renee Hellweger (yikes), everyone else in this movie stunk too, aside from some notable exceptions.  Yo Viggo: sitting there with no expression isn’t acting.  It’s called sitting, and I’m doing it right now.  If you’re going to pull the silent but deadly thing, at least get some Aragorn-esque fire smoldering in those eyes.  Ed Harris did his best Clint Eastwood impression, and he gets by ok with it, though he’s obviously no C.E.  Jeremy Irons plays Jeremy Irons playing every role ever played by Jeremy Irons.  In the first 10 minutes, he’s electrifyingly scary.  After that, he phones in his performance like Alexander Graham Bell.  And I don’t know whether to blame Irons or Director Harris for this one, but Bragg’s accent was a joke– not quite British, not quite American.  I can just picture the conversation:

Ed- “Can you do an American accent?”
Jeremy- “Did you even see The Lion King?  Come on!”
Ed- “Fine.  Can you fake one?”
Jeremy- “I’ll fake it for the first 45 minutes and then you’re on your own.  Deal?”
Ed- (unable to hear Jeremy because Renee’s piano playing is so loud) “Um, yea, that sounds good.”

Again, I must reiterate that parts of this movie were terrific.  The gunslinging scenes were perfectly executed– they were thrilling and suspenseful, but always felt controlled and matter-of-fact.  The relationship between Hitch and Cole was pretty interesting, as was observing the clever, calculated ways in which Cole went about stopping Bragg and his men and bringing order to the town of Appaloosa (like the way they arrest Bragg, scare off his men from the sheriff office, and deal with the first of Bragg’s men in the saloon).  I also appreciate this film for its contribution to the contemporary western genre.  But the poor directorial choices, the terrible romantic dreck that throws the whole movie into a new craptacular realm, the weak performances and the awful, awful music tear this new western off its once-promising perch and flush it right down the outhouse toilet.

Grade: D+