Blu-ray Review - Planes: Fire and Rescue (2014)

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Planes (2013)

AKA: Disney's Planes: Fire & Rescue; Planes: Fire & Rescue

As the very embodiment of not just wishing upon a star but aspiring to fly among them to make his Disney dreams come true, in the first of three planned "World of Cars" spin-off Planes pictures, Dane Cook's ambitious crop duster ventured from humble beginnings as a farm flyer before overcoming enormous obstacles to take to the international skies as a world-class racer.

Yet just because the underdog made it to the top of our eye-line (in some gorgeously crafted CG sequences that helped distract us from the otherwise by-the-numbers plotline), it doesn't mean that he'll be smooth sailing in the sky for long as this time around, reality in the form of a faulty gearbox soon sends him crashing down from cloud nine.

Hoping to remedy the mess he’s made at home, Dusty cruises over to Piston Peak National Park for what he assumes will be a cakewalk compared to everything he's achieved.

However he quickly finds himself overwhelmed, outclassed, and — whether or not he wants to admit it — seriously impressed by the high precision flying, jaw-dropping displays of teamwork, bravery and lack of ego evidenced by the squad of true heroes whom he encounters.

And though it may be smaller in scope to the global scale of its predecessor, Planes: Fire and Rescue is vastly superior to the first film which ran out of gas and plot by the end of the first act.

Yet while the original Planes would have been better off wrapping up its entire storyline in the form of a short film as opposed to a feature, Fire and Rescue only gets better as it continues, particularly as witnessed by the coolly cinematic introduction to the crew (and what they can do) cut in time to AC/DC's "Thunderstruck."

Admittedly and much like the previous installment, Fire is a retread of the same character archetypes, storylines, style, and structure of Cars — this time with Ed Harris taking on the role as the mentor embodied by Paul Newman in the Pixar original.

However, the one bonus that this film has over the rest of the World series is a genuinely witty, against-type voice-over turn by Modern Family's Julie Bowen Dipper, the aptly-named new coworker of Dusty who's as dippy and she is determined to make Dusty her wingman.

While Dipper's overeager charm recalls Jessie in Toy Story 2 and Dory in Finding Nemo, a theme from another Pixar franchise film floats into the last half of Disney’s Planes that echoes the mature moral conveyed in Monsters University.

For just as Billy Crystal's Mike struggled to adapt his future plans and roll with the punches when he learned that the path he'd always imagined for himself wasn't in the cards, it's precisely the same ability-driven setback that Dusty faces in this film upon realizing that sometimes life doesn't always go the way you’d expect.

A rough patch of a plot twist that can also be viewed as a metaphor for disability, Dusty's role-defining character arc is universally relatable from multiple points-of-view.

Uniting the ambitious flier with his mentor on a more soulful level, viewers eventually discover that, like Dusty, the decision to join the Fire and Rescue Squad came later in life as a fallback career for the character voiced by Harris as well.

Predictably of course, Planes: Fire and Rescue takes a cheap way out by giving its characters another happily ever after solution in the nick of time. Nonetheless, even utilizing this plotline is an admirably responsible step in the right direction for Disney given that their entire empire is built upon wishing on a star and dreams coming true.

For fittingly, over the past thirty years there's been a definite paradigm shift at the House of Mouse in an important transition for not only the classic fairy tales that served as a foundation for the happiest place on earth but also in the underdog films that have replaced them as modern day wish fulfillment sagas.

Winningly, they’ve managed to infuse the works with more realism while still staying true to their roots by never taking away from the importance of optimistic dreams.

Thus, Disney has not only taken responsibility for the oversimplification of tales of old by showing us heroes that know they might need a backup plan to save themselves when times are tough but they also give the youngest generation filmic examples of these very lessons at the very same time.

While it's nowhere near as impactful or thrilling as recent Disney fare including the superlative Wreck it Ralph or Frozen, much like Dusty you have to admire the ability of Planes to bounce back from the problems of the first one early on to deliver something stronger and more successful all around.

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

DVD Review: The Face of Love (2013)

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Easily the most romantically Sirkian picture in independent cinema’s recent string of Hitchcockian doppelganger releases, much like Enemy, Arie Posin’s Face of Love acknowledges its inspiration with a subtly affectionate yet purposeful prop placement of a blink-and-you’ve-missed-it Vertigo poster early into the film.

Yet while it’s one of several puzzle pieces you’re supposed to put together and eventually decipher in Enemy, Posin and his co-screenwriter Matthew McDuffie are much more open in their soap operatic homage to Hitch’s greatest work in this straightforward tale.

In Love, the duo pay tribute not only to Vertigo's character archetypes and sets (an art museum plays a pivotal role, for example) but also work in some obvious cinematographic references and callbacks to the 1958 masterpiece that are sure to amuse film buffs on that level alone.

It’s just a shame that – aside from some tremendous turns by its ensemble trio – unfortunatelyy there’s not enough holding Love together beyond the film’s chemistry, artistry and in particular its organic and impressively humanistic approach to Vertigo’s melancholic treatment of being given a second chance at love.

After losing her husband (Ed Harris) of many years to a riptide drowning accident on their anniversary celebration in Mexico, Nikki (Annette Bening) emotionally shuts down and closes herself off to everything around her, moving through the world as though she were encased in a protective shell.

We catch up with her five years later – just going through the motions of a daily existence back in Los Angeles where she stages houses to “breathe life into the emptiness” of architecture. Things take an intriguing turn when on a typically uneventful day, she accidentally crosses paths with a stranger (Harris again) whose uncanny resemblance to her departed love manages to breathe life into the emptiness of her shell, however fleetingly.

Recounting the run-in to her loyal neighbor (and fellow widower Robin Williams), Nikki tells him the incident “felt like being alive again.”

But before you start to question the metaphysical basis of the film as a sort of romantic hybrid of Hitch, Ghost and the sort of women’s weepies of the 1940s that might’ve starred Gene Tierney, Posin and McDuffie reaffirm their commitment to stay rooted in reality.

However as the film continues and Nikki invariably hunts down the lookalike before a tentative friendship blossoms into a romance of convenient predictability, I couldn’t help but realize that in retrospect, their decision to make everything so cut and dried might have been a mistake. Namely, once we get over our initial surprise, Face is ultimately missing some sort of element that would’ve rationalized the heroine’s at times awful behavior and kept us guessing.

By playing it fully straight as the grieving Nikki hides the truth and begins bringing her new beau to all the old familiar places like a gender reversal Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, we lose sympathy for her way too quickly and doubly so after learning of her new man’s sudsy secret.

Moreover, by constantly having her postpone the inevitable of coming face-to-face with her daughter (Jess Weixler) or neighbor who could out her deception at any time, the movie only has one place left to go and one hand left to play which doesn’t make it very exciting once we reach the second, troubled act.

Stuck in the middle of the sea without anything to push the sailboat towards the shore whether it’s wind or a new obstacle like rain (or even a damn riptide), Love begins to sink despite the valiant efforts of its mesmerizing cast to try and make us believe that they've had a trustworthy compass they’ve been following all along. Instead, it feels like there were a few script changes and rewrites in the final act that didn't make this transition to film any smoother.

Nonetheless buoyed by some genuinely poetic dialogue and marvelously sophisticated subtextual layers early on (as Nikki is offered a museum ticket to an exhibit called “In Pursuit of the Past” just before she first lays eyes on Harris), it’s clear how much skill Posin and McDuffie have to build tension and create drama.

I just wish they would have dedicated as much energy to the second half as they did to the first.

Frustratingly, they introduce some terrific ingredients in addition to Nikki’s “alive” line that go nowhere but could’ve salvaged the film and led us everywhere, including making us realize fairly early that her neighbor had been hopelessly in love with Nikki for years, much like Stewart’s gal pal in Vertigo.

From a wasted subplot and supporting role for her daughter (the talented Good Wife actress Weixler) to some gorgeous cinematography by Spanish cameraman Antonio Riestra, there’s a much stronger film buried somewhere beneath the idea, the intent, the script and the footage that was shot than the one that wound up on the screen.

From the universally relatable premise of wanting more time with someone we’ve loved and lost to the fact that this film, which feature’s Bening’s most radiant turn in years comes from such a raw personal place for Posin (as it was inspired by a chance sighting of a lookalike by his widowed mother), the end result isn’t half as effective as it should’ve been.

Luckily and thanks to the talent of the cast and crew who’ve accumulated twenty Oscar nods between them, even though it loses its way around the middle of this succinct 92 minute feature, The Face of Love looks very different to us all.

And at the very least there’s something lovably genuine about Posin's well-intentioned but flawed endeavor from the lyrical line reads to the heartbreak of Robin Williams (alongside Bening and Harris) that makes Love worthy of taking the face time to see it for yourself.

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Blu-ray Review: Enemy at the Gates (2001)

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“I am a stone,” Vassili Zaitsev (Jude Law) repeats meditatively while on sniper patrol in director Jean-Jacques Annaud’s most unusual World War II film-- 2001’s Enemy at the Gates.

Despite the way it soon veers into unique territory--shortly into the work there’s an obvious nod to the opening sequence of horrifically intense combat devastation that puts viewers right in the midst of battle as witnessed in Steven Spielberg’s bravura opener to Saving Private Ryan which was the most effective and tightest piece of cinematic craftsmanship contained in that particular film.

However, Annaud’s contemplative work fixates more on the individual experiences of Law’s “lone wolf” sharpshooter Zaitsev in a stark contrast to the more traditional devotion to one specific Band of Brothers that we’re repeatedly presented with throughout the genre.

Despite its absence of a traditional credit, the film co-written by Annaud and Alain Godard drew inspiration for the title from as Variety reports William Craig’s book by the same name which centered on “a duel between a Russian shepherd and a German nobleman during the Battle of Stalingrad (1942-43)." Yet when the screenwriters discovered several differing accounts throughout the official Zaitsev files, they decided to employ artistic license in basing the work on actual individuals but presenting the narrative in a way they saw fit.



Much to its benefit, this decision resulted in the creation of an ideal rival for Zaitsev’s sensitive but naturally gifted shooter who’s racked up well over two hundred kills. The "villain" of the piece arrives in the form of Ed Harris’s brilliantly acted (yet most likely composite character) Major Konig who is brought over from Germany to try and put a stop to Zaitsev. His goal in doing so is not just because of Zaitsev's talent but because he’s been crafted into a Russian propagandist folk hero in order to rally Stalingrad into what would become one of the greatest turning points of the battle to halt Hitler’s Germany from gaining even more territory.

However, on the less effective "creative invention" side, the film fumbles in its development of a believable and engrossing love triangle. Although again they based the participants on real people including Law’s Zaitsev who was in fact romantically linked to Rachel Weisz’s highly educated scholar turned soldier Tania-- and you can never go wrong by inserting a Fiennes brother into the romantic mix (in this case Shakespeare in Love’s smoldering Joseph)—the movie screeches to a halt whenever this becomes the main focal point. It's exacerbated sadly by the awkward dialogue with which Fiennes’s political soldier turned expert journalistic propagandist Commisar Danilov is saddled that weakens his characterization considerably.

Following a breathtaking and overwhelming battle sequence that rivals Saving Private Ryan for its authenticity and ability to transport us right into the start of the earliest battles in Stalingrad as soldiers are ominously advised that one man will get a rifle and the other one will follow until the first dies and he takes over—Zaitsev and Danilov encounter one another underneath a pile of corpses.

While the nervous yet determined Danilov secures a rifle-- determined to pick off a handful of German soldiers to avenge the deaths of the hundreds of his comrades within close range-- the lower-ranking Zaitsev intervenes, offering whispered advice, admitting he can shoot “a little” before he takes over the assault. And in a dazzling feat of bravery, he manages to stay calm under pressure in his stoic or stone like level-headed approach, executing them coolly and quickly at precisely the same moment explosions go off to ensure their survival.



Forming an instant brotherly bond and intellectually daring to go against the traditional wisdom of trying to use fear and threats to spur his countrymen onward, Danilov decides that in the darkest time what Stalingrad really needs is hope and a hero in which they can believe. Working in tandem with Zaitsev as they respond to scores of fan letters-- sort of like an early, war-time version of an agent or PR man and similarly in a way that makes them seem at times like one individual with two heads—Danilov continues his mission by printing off a series of articles complete with tallies of Germans killed, and photogenic black and white hero shots of Zaitsev.

While the more humble Zaitsev worries that his friend is exaggerating his skills far too much and he can’t possibly live up to the legend circulating throughout the ranks that garners a favorable response from Bob Hoskins’ Nikita Kruhushchev—he’s persuaded by Danilov that he believes in him completely. Although the highly effective propagandist tool instantly gives everyone something to believe in and the idea that they can stop the menacing force of Hitler’s better-equipped and more experienced soldiers, it also raises not just Zaitsev’s anxiety level but the stakes as well when Germany sends in Harris’ daunting Konig to take him down.

Despite the fact that this is a stellar set-up and that Weisz is always a welcome presence, Enemy at the Gates loses its momentum when Danilov and Zaitsev set their sights (romantic rather than rifle-based!) on Tania which finds Danilov growing increasingly more unlikable as the lovely Weisz gravitates physically and emotionally to Law’s quiet sniper.

Like a one-man roller-coaster, Fiennes’ Danilov soon resorts to foolish attempts to try and point out Zaitsev’s inferior education and their differences in class as reasons why his own survival as well as Tania’s are far more important than Zaitsev that goes against his earliest character development.



And while personally this seemed merely unpleasant and implausible as the film moved along and Danilov became so irrational that he felt more suited to a weekday soap opera-- intriguingly and with solid logic-- The New York Times pointed out that (although I feel it was probably not their intention) his evolution personality-wise “comes close to anti-Semitic caricature,” which “evokes some ugly, ancient prejudices,” that nonetheless even the journalist notes was most likely not the purpose of writers Annaud and Godard.



However, much to his credit--while quietly Harris manages to steal the whole movie especially in a series of escalating sequences where he bribes a child he knows is working both sides for information-- Fiennes soldiers on indeed. Surviving the enemy of the ridiculous of script, his performance is an admirable achievement that seriously displayed his first-rate skills opposite a (then) newcomer Jude Law whose mind-boggling talent has grown over time and was best evidenced in another “cat and mouse” effort opposite Michael Caine in Kenneth Branagh’s remake of Sleuth.

Still upon seeing it again for the first time since it’s theatrical run and aside from the fact that the romantic plot should’ve been caught in the crosshairs of a sniper in its screenplay form--there’s more than enough plot here for the filmmakers to utilize for the film that salvages it and then some.

While the sound balance is a bit off and you find yourself reaching to adjust the volume often to find a suitable mixture of explosions and dialogue, the Blu-ray which also contains some standard edition bonus features is most effective as a sort of chess match. Or, a war film as whittled down to its essence as many have likened—a “cat and mouse” situation as Law and Harris are filmed in extremely tight, blue-eye filled close-ups which comprise an eerie mirror image as they try to find an opening for a clear shot, reminding themselves like Law’s “I am a stone” mantra to remain perfectly still in the meantime.



Yet in spite of its structural flaws and a score that sounds all too familiar (Schindler’s List and Private Ryan came to mind but if anyone knows what it is, e-mail me since it’s driving me nuts), the film succeeds in its unusual approach. Instead of fixating on a group dynamic, comprising it as a man verses man battle-- not to mention featuring a woman in the part of a soldier as opposed to a worried wife-- and centering it in Stalingrad helps make Gates highly entertaining and quite distinct in a crowded sea of WWII movies.

Working with his The Lover cinematographer Robert Fraise in this exquisitely beautiful picture—that save for a few noticeable blood splatters which hit the lens and thus pulls you out of the moment, calling attention to the work as a “movie”—it’s a striking achievement in its sheer scope as the most expensive British production ever made (upon its release) and one that offers a unique Russian point-of-view of the fight to save Stalingrad.

Although at times the colors seem a bit soft in the visual transfer-- which if memory serves correctly were originally present in the film print as well since they were shooting without a large emphasis on artificial light to keep everything naturalistic with some tension filled moments of hand held battle shots—the Blu-ray excels in its three-dimensional picture quality.

Moreover, this is evident right from the start as the soldiers attempt to stay alive huddled in boats as they cross the sea only to struggle to stay alive on land in one of Annaud’s most riveting sequences that fortunately is addressed in a bonus feature indicating just how many explosions were actually going off (triggered by stunt men) at the time to fully immerse the actors, filmmaking team, and indeed the audience in what the chaos of war is like.

And while here, his film does as mentioned earlier draw comparisons to Ryan and several other epic battle pictures—Gates seriously entices once it settles into a suspenseful and more intimate (yet no less deadly) exploration of the side of the war waged by snipers who must stay awake for hours or days waiting for the right moment to squeeze the trigger before the other one does it first. Hence, "I am a stone. I am a stone."

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Blu-ray Review: The Truman Show (1998)

Premiering on Blu-ray

For those of you who are still wondering which format or edition to select when it comes to best appreciating director Peter Weir's '90s masterpiece The Truman Show, near the end of 2008 Paramount Home Entertainment released a masterful Blu-ray edition that manages to say "Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Evening, and Good Night," to all the rest.

Although the extras transferred over from the Special Edition DVD remain in standard definition (aside from HD Theatrical Trailers), it's the gorgeous quality of the film itself that makes Blu the biggest draw with a marked difference visible within moments. Additionally, the studio held such belief in the quality of their product that the Blu-ray offers DVD owners a ten dollar rebate when they make the upgrade.

While, much like 1998's other "life on television" film-- New Line Cinema's Pleasantville-- you may want to adjust and heighten your color palette a bit to find the ideal setting to get the hyper real reality of an artificial, picturesque world, I found that the "cinema" setting was the most precise both visually and audibly with a traditional HDMI hook-up.

The film, which remains one of my personal favorites of the '90s-- made the world suddenly view funnyman Jim Carrey in a whole new light (well, those unfamiliar with some of his obscure credits anyway). Based on Andrew Niccol's ingenious script about a man who unknowingly has been raised in front of millions as the unaware star of a twenty-four hour, thirty year running reality television show, Australian director Peter Weir's unique blend of humor, light, pathos, melancholy, and imagination uplift the work from what could've been an incredibly dark, cynically toned, and paranoid science fiction production.

Intriguingly anticipating the reality television boom years before the phrase was coined-- the then dubious idea of Carrey's Truman Burbank living his life completely on camera suddenly seems not only much more poignant but especially paramount, given the ethical, psychological, and moral implications it raises.

Although he goes about his day as an insurance salesman in Seahaven unaware that his wife Meryl (Laura Linney) and best friend Marlon (Noah Emmerich) are paid cast-members and that his community is in fact the biggest set ever constructed (although technically the movie was filmed in Seaside, Florida), the Shakespearean tinged tragedy with metaphors ranging from religious symbolism to Campbell's mythic structure has made the work not only qualify as an acceptable scholarly substitute to teens dropping out of high school in Ireland but has also spawned a new psychological disorder known as "Truman syndrome."

Described by the Associated Press as "a delusion afflicting people who are convinced that their lives are secretly playing out on a reality TV show," the film-inspired phenomenon not only "underscores the influence pop culture can have on mental conditions" as scientists note but also raises intriguing debate as Bellevue psychiatrist Dr. Joel Gold argues, "The question is really: Is this just a new twist on an old paranoid or grandiose delusion... or is there sort of a perfect storm of the culture we're in, in which fame holds such high value?"

The answer most likely seems as though it may be as a sort of combination of the two but the hypothesis set forth by the film has made Weir's Truman Show one of the most discussed cult films of my generation and in 2008, it was listed as "one of the ten most prophetic science fiction films," ever made by Popular Mechanics, yet some critics like Ronald Bishop of Sage Journals Online have taken a bit of a more critical view, noting that "In the end, the power of the media is affirmed rather than challenged," as ultimately "Truman's life inspires audiences around the world, meaning their lives are controlled by his."

Whatever the case or the viewpoint, the bottom line is the film has gotten people thinking or as Weir cited in evalutating the existentialist work, "There has always been this question: is the audience getting dumber? Or are we film-makers patronizing them? Is this what they want? Or is this what we're giving them? But the public went to my film in large numbers. And that has to be encouraging."

Indeed it does and it definitely does speak volumes that of the slew of reality based movies that were made, the ones that raised the most questions such as Pleasantville and The Truman Show have stayed around whereas the ones that simply pandered to the audience or treated us poorly like EdTV have basically vanished from our memory.

Part of the power of The Truman Show is not only in the pitch-perfect writing, astute direction of Weir (Witness, The Year of Living Dangerously, Dead Poet's Society), and effective performances from all including not only Carrey, Linney, Emmerich, and Natascha McElhone but especially the Golden Globe winning Ed Harris who plays the film's series creator-- the Christ like-- Christoff but also in how much audiences can pick up with each successive viewing.

Whether it's noting the amount of symbolism used throughout especially in the names like the aforementioned Christoff but also in the case of Emmerich's Marlon who is constantly "fished" out-- thrown into the river to swim in whatever situation the producers need by sending him constantly in to find or "lure" Truman back onscreen and the contradictory name of our leading man himself-- a "True-man" whose last name "Burbank" is indicative of his studio atmosphere.

The 5.1 Dolby TrueHD audio quality of the score by Burkhard Dallwitz (and with select compositions by Phillip Glass) sounds more breathtaking than ever in this transfer and while on first glance, you'll no doubt get lost once again in the sweeping and heightened reality that Weir sets his drama in, the film-- as fans constantly remind-- is worth numerous looks and especially another one after you take in the two-part making of featurette which goes a long way into providing a deeper insight into how the film evolved in tone and spirit over sixteen drafts and endless backstories created in the one year delay they waited until Carrey was free to shoot.

From providing Linney with an old Sears cataolgue from the '40s for the actress to study the old-fashioned posturing her character uses throughout and Emmerich's astute observation that every decade there's a small number of movies that belong in our collective "library" and this is definitely one, it's a tremendous over forty minute in-depth look at the cinematic process. The Blu-ray disc also includes deleted scenes, a photo gallery, TV spots and a visual effects featurette, along with the handy bookmark feature to keep track of favorite sequences.

And although, on the surface, the abundance of reality television more than a decade later may make one assume that The Truman Show has become somehow slightly dated, when you keep in mind the year it hit theatres along with the years Niccol's script had been in circulation prior to that, and the amazingly exsitential questions raised throughout Weir's film, you'll be surprised to discover that the opposite is true.

Instead of feeling irrelevant or outdated, honestly age has improved The Truman Show so much that it feels even more revolutionary today once-- much like Truman-- you delve beyond the superficial beauty of Seahaven to find what's really going on and end up thinking long and hard about how much privacy citizens are willingingly giving up today in this fame hungry culture of YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and more.

Appaloosa (2008)

Director: Ed Harris

When you have ghosts, you call the Ghostbusters, but when you’re in the Old West and evil-doer Jeremy Irons guns down your marshal and his deputies in cold blood and you want your town back, the best people to call are the quiet but tough freelance lawmen Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch (played by Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen respectively). Of course being that phones weren’t exactly a logical luxury back in the dangerous town Appaloosa in the Old West territory of New Mexico in the 1880’s, luckily for the town councilmen, when word of the lawless, powerful murderer Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons) gets around, the two men who’ve been keeping the peace for several years ride into town, figuring they’ll be able to do the same without any trouble.

“It’s what we do,” one of them dryly remarks and the other replies, “It is, ain’t it?” The subtle give-and-take banter in the earnest and laid-back yet commanding portrayals of its believable leads owe a great deal not just to the chemistry between Harris (who co-wrote the film and also directed) and Mortensen, working together for the first time since Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, but it also seems like it’s derived directly from the old classic westerns of the era of John Wayne.

It isn’t hard to imagine Rio Bravo stars John Wayne and Dean Martin sliding into these roles and it’s this old-fashioned feel—a deliberate choice by Harris who wanted to keep his film “in the classic mode”—that sets it apart from the modern, ultra-violent “revisionist approach” that’s made a comeback as of late (Entertainment Weekly, pg. 48; 8/22/08).

Based on crime writer Robert B. Parker’s novel, Harris further explained to EW that he brought the book to the Toronto Film Festival specifically to get it into the hands of his Violence costar while promoting their earlier film. And although “it’s a totally awkward proposition, handing another actor a book like that,” Harris continues, his gamble paid off and the two turn in Oscar worthy performances and the one that’s the most impressive comes directly from Mortensen (ever the chameleon losing himself in a role whether it’s this or Violence or last year’s brilliant Eastern Promises) as the sensitive, intelligent gunslinger who backs up Cole with an eight gauge-- no questions asked.

When Cole falls for a beguiling young widow, the flirtatious pianist Allison French (Renee Zellweger), something in the men’s dynamic changes as Cole, blinded by his affection is filled with tunnel vision, unable to make solid judgments when it comes to his new love. The camaraderie between the men, even when events escalate and threaten to tear them apart is what drives Appaloosa as an old-fashioned character piece that’s an obvious homage to the best of the genre, making Harris’ decision not to just insert senseless violence and ridiculous shoot-outs far more admirable as we realize his utter devotion to the classics that not only inspired him but made America fall in love with the genre in the first place.

It's been said that the western has evolved with each decade and more specifically that allegorically speaking you can tell what’s going on in the world by the type of character John Wayne was playing from the young, innocent, ever eager cowboy in the 30’s through the world-weary, beaten down and angry version a few decades later. This film seems to draw directly from the heyday of the 50’s—showing the danger of the Old West and the tendency to make lawmen jaded as in a funny scene right off the bat as Cole asks Zellweger's French if she’s a whore and she asks him how long he’s been killing people instead of “keeping the peace.” Yet there’s an optimism about Cole and a silent devotion and compassion in Hitch that makes what’s not being said in the sparse screenplay just as important as the joking slightly Elmore Leonard inspired dialogue.

Although this is sure to be overlooked in a sea of bigger and more expensive ad campaigns all fighting for Oscar and Harris even acknowledged in the same EW piece that “you can count on one hand—or maybe half a hand—the number of Westerns that were box offices successes in the past,” I’d urge you to take a chance on it whether you’re a student of the genre or one who normally would avoid it at all costs. Because, in the purity, simple beauty and classic style that is Appaloosa, Mr. Ed Harris has crafted something that feels both old and new, which is an incredibly refreshing combination for theatergoers in 2008.

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