The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Reviewed October 2011I was surprised to see in the titles that Ed Harris has directed this movie. Anyways, it resembles a bit of 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' for the portrayal of the lead characters and it is a template western with all it's stereotypes used to it's advantage. All I can say about this one is, it has nothing not to like and nothing too much to like too. Virgil Cole (Ed Harris) and Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen) are reputed gunslinging partners and are hired by a town for a price to protect them from an unruly rancher, Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons). The famed duo start off in their style and stays a step ahead of the bandits by controlling their movement in the town. Then arrives a 'young' widow Allison French (Renee Zellweger) which changes the equation a bit as both Everett and Virgil fall for her. Later with a few incidents they come to know that Allison is a a woman who likes to be with the head of the pack. So it is just a competition from here to be the head of the pack as more people join the competition adding more duels, putting in loyalty in the mixture and what not. It is a western that could've had an edge, but the safe directing approach by the inexperienced Ed Harris sucks the joy out of it. In my opinion, James Mangold would've done a terrific job the same way he did with '3:10 to Yuma'. I haven't seen a lot of Viggo Mortensen apart from the LOTR series, History of Violence and Eastern Promises. In all these movie he plays a man of control and does a terrific job. He plays the same here too, but somehow feels extremely inadequate mostly I suspect because of his look here. Never been fond of Renee Zellweger and she does not raise any bars here though she lands a terrific character. The role is of a sultry seductress and Zellweger puts no effort to back it. I enjoy subtlety, but to be too subtle to even make it's point is pointless. Best watched when you are too lazy to change the movie midway and has nothing else to do.

This movie is quite slow, but hey, its a western after all. My favorite part is when the whore tries to split up Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris' bromance and fails miserably. Also, that 10 gauge shotgun is a metaphor for his dong. The bad dude in the movie is also very well acted. The whole movie you're just begging for revenge on the guy (I won't spoil the ending for you though) The only reason I took off a star is because Renee Zelwigger is freakin weird looking and her character drives me nuts, which makes her numerous spankings (both verbal and physical) from Ed Harris all the more satisfying. Overall a great blend of a traditional western with the building vengeance and methodical pace, mixed with elements of the modern. I give the bromantic part 10/10, 9/10 overall

It was very moral film. Savvy lawmen who were honest & told the truth, who never killed except to uphold the law. They defined integrity. I liked the quirkiness of the characters, e.g. the town leaders (Spall) funny bickering; "sequestered" and the other words that Mortenson defines for Harris. These vocabulary exchanges symbolized their relationship built on friendship, loyalty, & mutual trust. Sometimes it tried a bit too hard & it felt forced, perhaps because of the lack of flow in Irons' forced accent (why not let him be English?—he ends up importing that English steer anyway) & Zellweger's weirdness. Zellweger played her flawed character like Harris told her, but she needed to show a darker side—not just the insecure lunatic who was scared of everything. She was the antithesis of the men's morality, so why didn't she get punished? We didn't get stereotypical natives, but characters who accepted the horse because they had integrity. Hell, everyone had more integrity than her. The end showed Mortenson accepting her two- faced immorality only because Harris had affirmed that he wouldn't leave her. With this declaration, Mortenson had no other choice in the end but to move on (to take care of himself) & kill Irons (to aid Harris). I get it, but I didn't like it as an invested movie viewer who thought she was trash and didn't deserve him.

Appaloosa is certainly not a unwatchable film, but isn't a enjoyable one either. Is nearly pointless to watch this movie, to be honest. It don't brings nothing new or at least good or entertaining to the table at all. So lets start to talk about it:, three reasons of 'Why' Appaloosa don't works: 1. the characters actions are way too slow paced. There is almost no conflicts between the characters, and when you think that something "exciting" is finally going to happen, it just...don't happen. 2.The 'villain', the only element of conflict in the entire story, has absolutely no power and he almost don't shows up until the first hour of the movie. Way too much time. 3. One of the most annoying things in this film are certainly the pointless dialogues between the main characters. I love movies which are driven by good dialogues, but certainly Appaloosa is not one of them. Literally a dread western.