The Reel Critic

Author: Josh Wessler

Movie: Appaloosa
Director: Ed Harris
Starring: Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen and Jeremy Irons

Town marshall Virgil Cole has trouble with words. Guns he can handle - he enters a fight with his jaw set and his chest pushed forward. Yet he relies on his deputy, Everett Hitch, for his ability with an eight-gauge rifle as much as for his sharp mind. Though Virgil, a professional lawman in the New Mexico territory in the late nineteenth century, earns his respect with his pistols, without the clever manipulation of language he would be a mere rogue looking for a quick jackpot and another sunset to ride off into. Together with Everett, his left-brained, right-hand man, Virgil turns frontier law into a private enterprise, an easily reproducible program for conquering America's manifest destiny - the cost: a flexible sense of justice, a stomach for blood-letting and a knack for seeing the world in black and white (or at least white and green).

Appaloosa, a small dust bowl of a town suspended on the edge of lawlessness, is an entrepreneurial outpost, relying on the local copper mine and on small businesses to provide a stable community where one might start a family. Virgil and Everett appear on the town's main street, not to enjoy the oasis of civilization but to do their job. Randall Bragg, the local mobster, is suspected of running a house of gangbangers - on Bragg's property, law is out of its jurisdiction. Virgil and Everett were called in to restore order when the former sheriff was killed trying to apprehend Bragg at his ranch. Although Appaloosa's leaders agree to pay Virgil his normal fee, he reminds them of an even more pressing stipulation: he needs unconditional power to enact and enforce any law within Appaloosa's borders that he deems necessary. In the post-Civil War U.S., territorial law serves to test the strength of a recently healed union - law as ideology is a luxury and in an unsure world, where terror lurks on each mountain ridge, the need for a strong leader is unquestioned. [Analogies to the current political situation reserved for the review of Oliver Stone's latest film].

Ed Harris, who stars as Virgil and masterfully directs the picture, frustrates any attempt to pin down his character. Harris has eschewed his typical posture as infallible and opens himself to the contradictions of Virgil, whose sullenness can suddenly explode with violence and passion. He constantly reads Emerson yet seems unable to understand many of the words. Alongside Viggo Mortensen as Everett, Harris demands the audience's confidence, though he seems to know less than we think he should. Mortensen is also superb, animated by a striking performance by Renée Zellweger, who has never been better. Zellweger is Miss Allison French, an eastern woman who rather mysteriously appears in an Appaloosa café looking for a place to stay. She has no provisions - only one dollar - and no plans, but quickly catches the eyes of the two lawmen. As the town's rulers, they hire her as the hotel's piano player. Zellweger has a strange ability to assert her authority while avoiding a clear gaze - at first glance, she may appear lost amid the male-dominated violence of the frontier, but her search for stability is ruthless in its own way.

The campaign to capture Bragg drags on like the ongoing presidential bid, though the film engages the audience as CSPAN only dreams of. Bragg, played by Jeremy Irons, taunts Virgil with his calm assurance - his faint Irish brogue seems to be a conspicuous sign that Bragg is an instigator and a foreigner (which may well have described most people in the nineteenth century North American West). As if the film's producers felt it necessary to rely on cliché, Bragg's gang is filled with Mexicans and vague, nameless hoodlums. Until they agree to settle down and buy into Appaloosa's budding economy, they are merely unrefined outsiders, stuck in their primal manners. They continue to be a threat to Appaloosa's sovereignty, but they are increasingly forced to retreat southward with Virgil's growing sense of jurisdiction.

Virgil is the characteristic businessman - he markets himself as the product, an exemplar of natural law and raw force. He only slept with whores - "and a squaw once"- until he met Allie French. While proud, he is not too idealistic to forgive certain indiscretions (on her part and on his). In a brief exchange, Virgil meets a pair of old friends and reminds them that the laws in Appaloosa are the same as in all his other towns - for one, guns are prohibited. He is a franchiser - as he meanders across the western plains, he leaves behind his brand of justice. Still, a gun in the hand of a toddler can be just as fatal, and heroic confidence is only a moral shield. Bragg contends that "this is not justice in this new nation of ours," which is fine, as long as you shoot first.