Directed by: Ed Harris
Starring: Ed Harris, Jeremy Irons, Viggo Mortenson, Jeremy Irons, Timothy Spall, Renée Zellweger
Rating: R

Ed Harris plays Virgil Cole in Appaloosa. (Courtesy photo)

Seeing Ed Harris and Viggo Mortenson paired in a western is like going to a wedding dinner and having a choice of either porterhouse or London broil. Seeing them paired in a western that tilts surprisingly toward comedy is like pouring strawberry sauce over those steaks. But leave it to actors as marvelously chiseled and disciplined as Harris and Mortenson to make us enjoy strawberry steaks. Harris has co-adapted Robert B. Parker’s novel and directed it with a real sense of classical western filmmaking.

What works in Appaloosa works beautifully. What doesn’t work fails by so much that it becomes strangely easy to extract it from the good movie. As he did in his directorial debut, Pollack, Harris shows an appreciation for allowing scenes to breathe. This is good for actors like Mortenson and Lance Henriksen who, like Harris, seem to will the movie into moving at their chosen speed. It’s less flattering for Jeremy Irons, Renée Zellweger, and Timothy Spall, who struggle to fill the languorous ends of shots. It also doesn’t help the pace, which can be too easygoing, even downright awkward. Harris deserves to cut his movies how he chooses, but his next goal as director should be to recruit a third eye with the gumption to tell him where to trim.

Harris and Mortenson play Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, a team of professional peacekeepers. They mosey into Appaloosa and find a frontier town reeling from the shooting of the sheriff and his two deputies. The man behind the killing: Randall Bragg (Irons), whose gang of ruffians treat Appaloosa like their playground. As Cole and Hitch coolly and methodically take apart Bragg’s gang, a wrinkle arrives in the form of Allison French (Zellweger). Virgil is instantly smitten by the proper Allie, and to Everett’s surprise a romance commences very quickly. When the men finally arrest Bragg and bring him to trial, hired guns the Shelton Brothers (Henriksen and Adam Nelson) show up to complicate things. Appaloosa delivers on the requisites of the classic western very well indeed. There are bar fights, shoot-outs, and showdowns, with Cole and Hitch making for a pair of very cool customers. There’s also very nice interplay between the learned and introspective Hitch and the coarse, emotionally vulnerable Cole.

Where Appaloosa goes spectacularly off the rails is in the subplot involving Zellweger’s Allie. I’ve always been a fan of Zellweger and find that her performances generally improve with repeated viewings. This role should be a good fit for her, but you get the sense Zellweger never got a handle on the role. She seems uncomfortable from start to finish. Worse, Zellweger’s face is disturbingly immobile. As Parker’s plot becomes more layered, Allie figures very prominently in Appaloosa’s unexpected, very interesting turns. Ugh. I feel bad saying it, but it’s a big deal in this movie. Parker, Harris, and co-writer Robert Knott really explore how frontier life wrote different rules about relationships. Zellweger’s strange performance is most distracting just when the themes become the most interesting.

Zellweger isn’t the only one who struggles, just the most prominent. Irons’ performance is good, but suffers for being palely reminiscent of Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood. Some of the supporting players seem to have been plucked from the crew for looking appropriately grizzled, but the damage is minimal. Few actors have a more varied filmography than Lance Henriksen. He has appeared in dozens of trashy genre films, yet also plays key roles in a handful of unassailable classics (Dog Day Afternoon, Close Encounters, Aliens). Henriksen is terrific as Ring Shelton—calm, menacing and real. But the movie belongs to Harris and Mortenson. They deliver the kind of stirring interplay you might have hoped to see from DeNiro and Pacino in Righteous Kill. Best of all is how funny they are together. Harris hasn’t smiled this much since he played John Glenn (alongside Henriksen’s Wally Shirra) in The Right Stuff 25 years ago.

Appaloosa is an odd concoction that works in spite of Harris’s still-shaky handle on directing. He smartly recruits top-notch technical support, including Dean Semler (Dances With Wolves) as director of photography and Steve Arnold (Ride With the Devil) as art director. Though there is some violence and sexuality, Appaloosa is fairly mild. Even the most intense moments are usually offset by humor. Make sure you stay until the end of the credits to hear the original ballad that Harris co-wrote and performs. I’m not sure he knows how hilarious it is, but it really doesn’t matter. It will only make you love the man more.

Alex Manugian lives in Sherman Oaks, California. He grew up in Groton and has reviewed movies for Harvard residents for many years.