Appaloosa, a stylish Western starring the intimidating and rugged Ed Harris, the sexy and suave Viggo Mortensen (yes, why, feel free to take advantage of me on a staircase, that would be just fine, actually…) and the inexplicably employed Renee Zellweger (I’ll be damned if I’m going to search out the e with an accent mark for her) is only playing in 6 theaters in Los Angeles County.  As you might imagine, there are a lot more than 6 theatres in Los Angeles County.  Why might that be?  Inquiring FilmFemmes want to know!

The answer that I have deduced is that it is because it is such an awful movie.*

Virgil Cole (Harris) and Everett Hicks (Mortensen) — oh god, those NAMES!! — come to Appaloosa offering their services as vigilante law enforcement to take the town back from Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons channeling Daniel Day Lewis channeling Daniel Plainview) and his band of rowdy outlaws who killed the last sherrif, or something.  There’s a lot of intimidating, mainly in the form of Viggo Mortensen silently posed with a shotgun and Cole is briefly distracted by the arrival of Allison French (Zellweger) who is single and “not a whore” but is still kind of a whore.  Oh yeah, there is nothing likable about any of the women that appear in the movie, either, which is something I tend to note.  Anyway, Cole and Hitch’s main objective is to convict Bragg of murder and watch him hang in the name of justice.  They encounter obstacles, find out that Allison is kind of a whore, have some gun battles, ride some trains and eventually reclaim Appaloosa.  Kind of.

Ed Harris directed the script that he co-wrote which reads like someone had a screenplay checklist that included a couple of plot points and some character quirks.  The story is fine, passable Western fare with outlaws, some violence, some horses and a little bit of romance.  But the story drags on, the goofy jokes completely negate any sense of caring you might have.  And oh, you have to look at Renee Zellweger for a significant portion of the movie.

 *Turns out the answer is that it is not in wide release until October 3rd.  I like my reason better.

Before there was No Country for Old Men, there was All the Pretty Horses, another western-y movie based on a Cormac McCarthy novel (yeah, apparently I should have known who this dude was). Matt Damon and Elliott from E.T. live in Texas, only after Matty’s granddaddy dies, his deadbeat whore of a mom is going to sell the ranch, so he convinces Elliott to saddle up and ride their horses to Mexico where life is awesome. Along the way, they run into that kid from Sling Blade, who is completely awesome except for he’s real scared of lightning and ends up soaking wet and naked in a ditch. Then they have to steal his horse back (because it ran away while he was in the ditch), then the kid goes off by himself (aw, he was so cool!) and Matt and Elliott get a job busting broncos (this is the scene that kicks the most ass) for some Mexican Patron who has a hot daughter (Penelope Cruz). Of course, that crazy kid comes back to haunt them and then the movie takes a totally annoying turn when they end up in jail for like, 25 minutes (in the movie).

The movie wasn’t great to begin with. I got past MD’s accent, Elliott was pretty cute though he didn’t have much to do, and I could totally get behind the idea of Damon/Cruz sex. But when they went to jail it was just kind of like “WTF? Is this the same movie?” Sure, Billy Bob Thornton is no Coen brother, but, this should have been better.