Appaloosa

Appaloosa is a western directed by Ed Harris. When Appaloosa has a problem with a man, Randall Bragg, and his gang because they won’t follow the laws and kill 3 sheriffs from Appaloosa, they decide to call help on two men, Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. They basically give over the town to Cole and Hitch so they can stop this man and his gang. And Cole and Hitch are willing to bet everything, including their own lives, to stop this man and bring him to justice. Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Jeremy Irons, and, Renee Zellweger all star in this western.

I say that the acting in Appaloosa is great; the actors play the part of the characters really well. Ed Harris was great in this, but not the best in the movie IMO. His acting really for most of the movies shows no emotion, but with the character that he’s playing he’s not supposed to which is why he did perfect in that role. Viggo Mortensen had the best acting in the movie IMO. His character was actually supposed to have emotion and he did, and did a perfect job of doing it. I seriously think Mortensen has a good chance of ‘Best Supporting Actor’ at the academy awards for his role as Hitch. Jeremy Irons did a pretty good job as the villain, not the best ever or anything, but a great job nonetheless. I actually really hated Renée Zellweger in this, but I’m not sure if I was supposed to or not. I think it’s a good thing, because of how her character was, I think your were supposed to hate her, because she’s supposed to be a whore in the movie. No one else in the movie really had a big part, but most of them were pretty good at the scenes they were actually in.

The story for Appaloosa was the best part by far, I thought like a lot of the westerns I’ve seen, it was going to be sort of boring, but it didn’t get boring once, and I was surprised. I know Appaloosa is based off a book though, so most book adaption does tend have at least an okay story, even though most have a good or great story. And Appaloosa was one of the book adaption’s to have a great story. I didn’t really like most of the ending though, until the last 5 minutes, which I absolutely loved, I was waiting for it to happen the whole movie. It immediately starts off really fast, which I wasn’t really expecting, I was sort of expecting a slow start and it get faster as the movie goes on, but it starts off fast and continues with it, until the ending, which then right after that it starts off fast again.

The visuals for this were great, but I was already expecting that because a lot of westerns tend to have great cinematography because of when they take place. I wouldn’t call them amazing or anything, but they sure were great and a good thing to note about the movie. So that’s one thing to expect when seeing Appaloosa if you ever decide to give it a shot like I did, which I hope you do.

I was actually surprised at how much action was in this, it didn’t really focus on action, which for once I’m glad about, but it did have more than I expected. It also had more comedy than I expected, just the way some of characters acted or their facial expressions sometime in the movie made me want to laugh, and I did because it was funny. But I did expect some action seeing as Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch were gunmen, so you already knew there were going to be some good gun battles.

Overall, this is definitely in my top 3 favorite movies of 2008, and is going to find a spot somewhere on my favorites list. Viggo Mortensen as Everett Hitch is also going to find a spot on my favorite characters list, because of how good I thought he was. I haven’t yet had a chance to read the book, but do sort of want to now that I loved the movie so much, I don’t really know how many differences there are to the book and movie though. But this is one definitely one I recommend seeing in theaters, but you might not be able to because I don’t see it being in theaters too much longer. If you miss it in theaters though, I strongly recommend at least renting it whenever it comes out on DVD.