Review: Western 'Appaloosa' Adds Welcome Twist

'Appaloosa' (R)(out of four)

There's a rogue outlaw in "Appaloosa," and a damsel in distress. There's a shootout on Main Street, and a prisoner breakout aboard a steam locomotive. There's all the standard gunplay and foreplay one has come to expect from America's most essential movie genre, but in the masculine friendship at the film's center, there's also something refreshingly unique about this twist to the wayward Western.

In a time when men said little and buried their emotions deep, here we see two men going about their business with few words and absolutely no hesitation. If most reclusive heroes of the old-time Westerns tended to operate at a distance from the audience, standing tall and proud as one-dimensional men of principal, "Appaloosa" allows us to get a little bit closer to men who aren't black and white, but varying shades of gray.

Both men are enigmatic creatures. As they ride into the rural, lawless town of Appaloosa, we meet both Virgil Cole (Ed Harris, who also directed the film), the strong and confident type, and Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen), his fiercely loyal sidekick. They are sheriffs-for-hire, the kind of rogue policemen who wandered the West once upon a time, setting up shop in whatever rural outpost could afford men with guns to protect them from the outlaws.

Virgil and Everett arrive at just the right time. Appaloosa's sheriff has been assassinated by Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons) and his gang, and the town elders are terrified. As Bragg's men terrorize the town, a few doors down the elders negotiate with Virgil and Everett. The two men of justice want absolute autonomy, and permission to write an improvised legal code that will allow them to go about their job with absolute impunity. At first, the citizens balk at giving two strangers absolute control, but their fears get the better of them, and the new sheriffs are hired.

Silence has always been essential to the great Westerns, the calm silence that is found at the edge of society and which exudes a sense of calm and vulnerability. But in "Appaloosa," silence is used to far more moving and mysterious ends. Virgil and Everett, whether sitting together out on the porch of the sheriff's office, or preparing to launch an attack on Bragg, rarely talk.

They look at one another and gesture at what they're thinking, but these two men are operating on an entirely different plane. They finish each other's sentences, and know what the other is thinking without having to say a word. The silence between implies a sense of comfort, but also something more.

Allison French (Renee Zellweger) enters the story abruptly, wandering through this new town in a state of confusion, as if she had somehow accidentally boarded the transcontinental railroad. Virgil immediately takes a liking to her, and they buy one of the new houses in the town.

Again, in most Westerns, this woman would be the force of purity, but the more we see of Allison in "Appaloosa," the more we sense a woman less of pure intentions than survival instincts. Clearly seeing romance as not the be-all and end-all, but as a means to an end, Allison is a survivor above all, and her loyalties are very much thrown into question.

On the surface, "Appaloosa" seems to be a standard of the genre. Two men of the law go up against a criminal, and try to bring him to justice, with a woman complicating matters on the sidelines. But while the shape seems familiar, very little about "Appaloosa" is conventional . Virgil seems to be the silent type, but is really quite transparent in the way he courts Allison, tripping over his words.

Everett sure looks like the blindly loyal sidekick, but in a number of subtle asides, we sense that he is, in fact, the far more complicated and interesting half of the equation. He has a woman, but isn't as overt in showing his emotions. He doubts some of Virgil's decisions -- including decisions that wind up being major mistakes -- but he clearly values loyalty above everything else. As Allison's behavior threatens to drive these two men apart, we see friendship strained, and then defined anew.

Harris and Mortensen, playing their characters with a bare minimum of dialogue, tell the story through their eyes and their body language. And the buried question that runs throughout the film is, just how deep does this friendship between these two men run?

What would these two men do for each other? How far back do they go? Can a woman come between them? Harris has crafted a story of two men who value something above gold and survival. We've seen plenty of Westerns about love and justice challenged at the new frontier; here's a movie where friendship is put to the ultimate test.