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Ed Harris is producer-director-co-writer of this foursquare western adapted from Robert B. Parker’s 2005 novel. Harris plays Virgil Cole, an itinerant freelance law enforcer, travels with his trusty sidekick Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen) who travels with his trusty eight-gauge shotgun. In a frontier brand of outsourcing, they help out towns overrun by lawlessness. Give us badges, pass our laws and we can fix things. They ride into Appaloosa, New Mexico. Outside the town limits there’s a rancher named Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons), a personal friend of President Chester A. Arthur, so they say. This effete easterner hires rude fellows who piss on the floor of the local saloon. Two of them killed a man from Chicago, then raped and killed his wife. When the sheriff goes to Bragg’s ranch to make arrests, Bragg guns down the lawman and his two deputies. “Appaloosa” is the tale of Virgil vs. Randall. A second tale looks at longtime partners Virgil and Everett after a new widow comes to town. Allison French (Renée Zellweger) may be the film’s most intriguing character, even if Zellweger, in her full Pug-face mode, delivers the weakest performance. Virgil and Everett are good at what is called “gun work.” Harris and co-writer Robert Knott shoot a classic piece of genre work. With Timothy Spall, Ariadna Gil, Lance Henriksen and Tom Bower. 107m. (Bill Stamets)
