Eric Jensen

OK, I have seen enough West­erns that I am more or less done with the genre. But I am always open to some­thing new. I am a big Robert B. Parker fan, I love Ed Har­ris, Jeremy Irons, Renee Zell­weger and Jeff Beal’s music so I had to see Appaloosa, although I regret­fully missed it on the big screen. Ed Har­ris and Viggo Mortensen play two hired guns, brought into Appaloosa to do bat­tle with the vio­lent, power-hungry rancher (Jeremy Irons) who has shot the for­mer sher­iff and deputy. The clas­sic West­ern setup…good guys take on evil sociopath and his large posse and clean up town. Of course, there is a mys­te­ri­ous and beau­ti­ful woman (Renee Zell­weger) to keep things inter­est­ing. What sets this film apart from the stan­dard fare are the many unex­pected sub­tle twists and turns. The plot never quite goes where you expect. The film focuses on the rela­tion­ship between Har­ris and Mortensen and the grad­ual unveil­ing of Renee Zellweger’s enig­matic char­ac­ter. Mr. Har­ris is a bril­liant sto­ry­teller and skill­fully bal­ances the clas­sic West­ern back­drop (the film looks absolutely gor­geous) with fresh char­ac­ters and plot twists. For exam­ple, Har­ris’ char­ac­ter reads Emer­son and uses $50 words unex­pected from a gun slinger. The gag is, he tends to for­get words, and con­tin­u­ally looks to his strong, silent side­kick, who even more sur­pris­ingly, com­pletes his sen­tences. Shades of Spencer and Hawk… There is some clas­sic Robert B. Parker-style dia­log as well. In one of my favorite scenes, Mortensen’s char­ac­ter is attempt­ing to start a…