Now Playing: Appaloosa

I’m a self-confessed hater of westerns. I think it stems back to when my dad would watch them on WUTV Saturday afternoons in the 80’s and early 90’s. God, how they made the day drag by and I forever associated westerns with boredom. Then along came No Country for Old Men and all that changed. I know, I know – that’s not a traditional western... but it opened the door and in flooded The Assassination of Jesse James, 3:10 to Yuma and There Will Be Blood (in no particular order). So, this year, when a new sheriff rode into town, I thought “what the hell” and bought my ticket for Appaloosa.

Starring Viggo Mortensen, Jeremy Irons, Renee Zellweger, and (also sitting in the director’s chair) Ed Harris, this seemed a pretty typical plotline: local bad guy (Irons, with an accent reminiscent of Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood) terrorises the eponymous town; good guys (Harris and Mortensen) show up to lay down the law; purdy lady who may or may not be shady (Zellweger as Mrs. French (!!) ) is thrown into the mix and ... we’re off! Plot-wise, it did get a little long in the tooth, but the believable acting and neat editing made up for it. A few very minor twists kept it from being entirely predictable. I wish I could compare it to the old westerns, but I’ve forever repressed those memories. When compared to the “new” ones, it wasn’t anything special. Nothing much to really expand upon, but it was a solid movie that I probably should have just waited for on Blu-Ray. 3.5 out of 5 stars.