Appaloosa

I saw this movie with the hope that it would be somewhere between Open Range and 3:10 to Yuma, the two best of the modern westerns (save for the Australian The Proposition). That's kind of a wide gap. Lots of room to fall into. Appaloosa falls behind Open Range and most movies. It's the worst movie I've seen since The Rocker, and this time, I have no excuses for the filmmakers.

Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen are fine actors. I enjoy both of them. But this script (from Ed Harris and a co-writer) offers nothing special for them to do. The plot seems to aim only for the lows of old Saturday afternoon western movies that played on Akron's worst local station. And it gets there. The only slightly appealing aspect of the film is Ed Harris and Mortensen's friendship (or "bromance" under modern terms). Even that falls short, however, because there are times when these two leads act completely out of logic or reason or accomplish unlikely strange feats. It seems that these two peacemakers and their newly sworn enemy Mr. Bragg (the barely registering Jeremy Irons) are only intimidating in theory. They talk a good amount of smack, but rarely do any of them deliver on their idle promises. In fact, I wonder why Irons took the role at all. There's nothing really for him to do. Except for the short burst of unlawfullness in the first two minutes or less, he is ALL talk.

And I'll only touch briefly on Renee Zellweger here. I must admit that my complaints here are less than objective. In Appaloosa, she's an eye and ear sore. I can't stand any moment she's on screen. I am not one to subscribe to the "Zellweger is inherently awful" theory. I enjoyed her in Chicago and Jerry Maguire and to a lesser extent Cinderella Man. But there is no redeeming quality to her work here. Her character offers nothing to the script save for unearned conflict. No one would fall for this character. No one would risk their life for this character.

And finally, Ed Harris must have cast his entire family or old bocce ball comrades in this movie because the bit players are some of the worst actors I can remember. I cringed every time one of them spoke. The only reason possible for casting such talentless actors must be a sense of duty Ed Harris must have felt.

*1/2

Dead Man

Go Jarmusch, go Jarmusch, go!

Well, he finally won me over. Dead Man is an excellent, offbeat drama/western with occasional dry wit common in Jarmusch films. The film started off very strange and included a series of events that led me to think the film was going to be a kin to Scorcese's After Hours. Dead Man ended up being a little less out there (although it tip-toed on that fence the whole time) than Scorcese's film. Still, Dead Man includes an Indian named Nobody, a cannibal assassin, a gun happy lumber yard honcho, and Iggy Pop in a bonnet and dress.

Dead Man is simultaneously a trademark Jarmusch film and a huge leap forward in quality for the director. A bigger budget, a professional cast, wonderful cinematography, and a more plot-based script than any of the other Jarmusch films that I have seen make for a fantastic movie. None of these things necessarily makes a great film. But, in the case of Dead Man, all these things gel together to create a very, very good movie.

The story is about William Blake (Johnny Depp), an accountant from Cleveland traveling out West to start a new job at a lumber mill. After a series of misunderstandings, he's shot and running from the law and the wrath of Dickinson (Robert Mitchum), a strange businessman, who hires three gunslingers (Michael Wincott, Lance Henrikson, and Eugene Byrd) to bring Blake back dead or alive.

Blake is saved by an Indian named Nobody (Gary Farmer) who speaks in mystical nonsense or plain common sense and believes that William Blake is the same man as the poet whose works he has read. "Did you kill the white man that killed you?" Nobody asks. "I'm not dead," Blake answers. "Am I?"

The film plays with that question. Nobody sees Blake as a skeleton after indulging in peyote. Blake continuously drifts in and out of consciousness for much of the movie. The question isn't exactly the meat and potatoes or sole source of meaning for the film, but does set up much of Nobody and Blake's interactions as well as a e ending.

The ending is anticlimactic, but in a very ironic way that fits the tone of the movie and left me mostly satisfied. Still, I somehow think the ending was not enough to finish the grand, strange journey there. I think the ending was saying something that lost me in translation. If you're listening Jim Jarmusch, what is your point? Or am I supposed to decide? Because that very well may be.

In Stranger than Paradise and Down by Law, Jarmusch wasn't exactly trying to tell me anything other than people are strange. I think he's also saying that in Dead Man, but there's something else, something that I'm missing.

While Blake is on the lam, he has run-ins with unique characters. He happens upon a group of weirdos (Billy Bob Thorton, Iggy Pop, Jared Harris) at a campfire. He faces two marshalls out for the reward for Blake. And in a great scene, he meets a narrow-minded, bigoted, fire-and-brimstone priest running a trading post out in the middle of nowhere. By this point, Blake is a famous outlaw and has become an excellent shot and more hardened man. When he is challenged, he lays waste to the men around him. "I'm tired," he says. It's more informative and conversational than a voice of inner turmoil.

It's an example of Jarmusch's handling of the drama and wit of his western. It's not like any movie in the genre that I have ever seen. While it stands out amongst its peers, I never felt that it was crazy and strange just for the sake of being crazy and strange. Maybe this is because Jarmusch's zaniness is so relaxed and non-chalant that it's easy to look over unless you're tuned into his vision and tone.

Depp and Farmer are excellent. Their scenes together are some of the best in the film. Depp starts off bright eyed and soon can't seem to keep his eyes open. Blake becomes just the kind of man everybody mistakenly thought he was in the first place. Nobody explains the change matter-of-factly as though no change has occurred at all. This new Blake was expected by Nobody all along and it seems there are no real surprises in Blake's journey back to where he came from. And when he gets there, there is beauty in the strangeness of the moment unlike all the strangeness that Jarmusch has unleashed in all the other movies of his I has seen.

Depp's seamless transformation and quiet meditations are perfectly portrayed. I would have become endlessly bored by his constant drifting in and out of consciousness if he and Jarmusch didn't make every moment he was awake so priceless. It's a startling performance because of Depp's ease moving between strange, dry wit and gun-toting bad ass.

Farmer, whom I think I've only seen before in a minor role in The Score, is wonderful. In some ways, Nobody is a stereotypical Indian guide like we've seen before in film - the wisdom of the rustic. But in some ways, he also has the strangest wit of all the characters. He leads the journey, but in some ways he's unconcerned how Blake gets there.

All is I know is that I really enjoyed the trip.

****

3:10 to Yuma

3:10 to Yuma is a new western, but it wears the marks of its tried and true forefathers of the genre proudly. You don't have to like westerns to like 3:10 to Yuma, but it will help. There are bad guys in black, stagecoach robberies, ruthless outlaw gangs, downtrodden ranchers, and sons aging much too fast on the hard, dry earth around them.

That is just some of the good news for you western fans (I'm sure at least a few exist on this campus). Certainly it is not bad news for those of you who could not care less about men in cowboy hats trotting about on horses and talking about the men they have killed. If you do not care, it rolls right off your back. What might stick is the psychological game of wits and will between the two main characters played by two of the best actors working today.

Russell Crowe plays Ben Wade, the aforementioned bad guy in black. Christian Bale plays Dan Evans, the aforementioned downtrodden rancher.

Wade is captured dallying about with a saloon gal in town after a stagecoach robbery. One of the men charged with the task of taking him to justice (via the 3:10 train to the prison in Yuma referred to in the title) turns out to be Evans. He is promised a sum of cash in return that could keep his struggling family above the financial waters it is drowning in.

Evans has two boys. The youngest looks at his father with worshipping eyes. The older boy, played by Logan Lerman, has not looked at him in that way for a long time. He does not respect his father, a civil war veteran with a bum leg who has not shown strength and fortitude in the eyes of his wife and oldest child during their recent struggles.

This is the basis of Evan's situation: he has something to prove to himself and his family. Therefore, when he is granted the opportunity to make things right, he takes it.

That means having to listen to the manipulative, suave, and dangerous Wade along the way to the train several days journey away. This allows the writers, director, and actors the opportunity to create the real entertainment. Sure, 3:10 to Yuma is a western, so there are gunfights and explosions. However, it is the interactions of these two men that kept me interested.

Wade keeps pushing Evan's buttons. Unlike the pushover Evans appears to be at the beginning, he begins to push back, meet gazes, make threats, and stand firm although it seems that inside all he wants to do is wobble freely.

Like many interesting villains, Wade is alluring. He draws you in with his charm, mean streak, and wit. What the film does well is establish a comfort with the character only to take away that comfort at will. Just when you start to think he is not all that bad, he strikes. He is kind of like a tiger in a magic show.

The film moves slowly at times, but this is because the film only carries the illusion of a "bang bang" western. Its true heart lies in these two characters on their journey not only to the train but also revelation.

Yuma ends in a shootout, but it is the actors rather than the action that do the heavy lifting. There is so much revealed about the characters within the last half hour that it might be too much.

I was not sure I liked the ending. I rolled it over in my head for a good hour after the credits rolled and I slowly began to see that the film had earned what had first seem forced. The filmmakers offer precedents along the way to the train that explain why the film can end in the way it does with its characters making the choices they do. I am not completely on board with the final result, but I can clearly see what the filmmakers intended me to.

I would be foolish not to mention the work of Ben Foster as Wade's right-hand man in the gang. It is a role ripe with bravado, and Foster takes full advantage of the opportunities given to him to shine. It is a performance I will remember that surely will get looked over by audiences because the two leads do such fine jobs.

These are neither Bale's nor Crowe's best performances, but each delivers solid, commendable work in what could have been a western too old fashioned to allow these wonderful modern actors to shine.

Not everyone shines, however. I have not really been a fan of Peter Fonda in the past, and his work in Yuma does not make me change my mind. I did not believe a word he said. His performance is too weak to hide the fact that it is Peter Fonda the actor pretending to be a tough SOB.

Another weakness is a completely unnecessary cameo from a famous face. He tries to hide behind a beard, but it is useless. His appearance took me out of the reality of the movie. It comes about halfway through. I committed to the reality of the movie. "These are cowboys. They are heading to a train. Good. I've got it." Then what's-his-face shows up and I said, "Wait...is that who I think it is? It might be. It is!" Then I am out. I am back in the world of celebrity rather than the world of pistols, spurs, and horses I am supposed to be in.

***1/2

The Proposition

This is the moodiest western I've seen (save perhaps the popular Unforgiven). It's dark. It's gloomy. It's also beautiful. There are shots of the Australian outback that belong on my wall. There's a very affecting scene somewhere in the middle of the film where a man sings a lovely Irish song that I can now hear my brother sing from time to time. But the song is forever connected to intercut shots of a mentally challenged outlaw being whipped to pieces. I can't describe how it makes me feel to hear something so beautiful sung while low volume screams of pain filter through. The acting is topped notch. While Guy Pearce is the most recognizable name from the bunch (he does a great job being quiet and letting his solemn face speak volumes), Ray Winstone and Danny Huston deliver amazing work. Ray Winstone is a sometimes brutal man who wants civility in a town where people are thirsty for revenge, and this conflict was the most interesting to me of the films many buttings of heads. More lyrical and poetic and gut wrenching is watching Guy Pearce toil over whether to kill one brother to save another. Danny Huston is an odd villain. He's a brutal killer with the soul of an artist (a crazy artist, but an artist none the less). The last shot of the film is the one that sticks with me the most. A bitter ending that paints the screen beautifully.

****