Appaloosa: Critic Reviews

Appaloosa is a pleasingly spacious piece of work, but for all of its little tangles it never musters the kick of a psychological duel.

Appaloosa shows a square jaw and a steely gaze, but also a smile and a wink.

Photographed handsomely with wide-angled majesty, the film does precious little myth-making, though Harris subtly twists some of the genre's conventions.

It's a pleasure to watch such gifted actors interact in a classic genre.

Filled with dusty light, craggy facial features and broad landscapes, it's a solid story that honors the traditions of the genre as it reworks them.

A warmly made, slightly offbeat movie about friendly devotion. It also happens to be a western, and every man in it is grizzled or wizened or both.

Though the leads do fine work, their efforts often feel slightly futile.

Mannered, episodic and slow.

From its first, mournful brass theme, Ed Harris's Appaloosa nails the look and feel of a classic Western. This is an old-style, laconically macho, six-shooting horse opera made with an obvious and unapologetic love of the genre.

Harris directs with a steady hand and sharp eye for the best in his fellow actors.

In all, Appaloosa is good as far as it goes -- everything in it feels true -- but I wish that Harris had pushed his ideas further.

What is seductive about Appaloosa is its easygoing rhythm.

Mortensen should certainly do another western, soon. Preferably he should do one with a real sense of danger to go along with all the neat, tidy, highfalutin' honor and decency.

In its own quiet way it delivers the goods.

Appaloosa is an archetypal western with touches of the modern buddy comedy. Though it falls short of these classics, it is a little bit Destry Rides Again and a little bit more Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Appaloosa is one of those movies that creeps up on you after the fact.

After Appaloosa establishes its slightly modern characters in a traditional setting, it has nowhere to go but toward the completely expected.

Ambition is a great quality in a filmmaker, especially when it's realized. Yet there is something to be said for just telling a story, and with Appaloosa, Harris does a fine job of it.

Ed Harris reunites with Viggo Mortensen, his co-star in A History of Violence, and the chemistry is easygoing and understated. But he should have left the direction to someone else.

Dialogue, much of it lifted straight from Parker's novel, proves mostly engaging.

Beautifully photographed by Dean Semler, Appaloosa is the best Western since Open Range and shows there's still life in this most unfashionable of genres.

Ed Harris, working from a Robert Parker novel, has crafted a meticulously detailed, newfangled old-fashioned morality tale of hard men who go soft when a woman comes between them.

Harris follows his strong helming debut Pollock with a contribution to the western movie revival that looks and sounds like a classic.

The top-heavy plot takes over, and the picture makes a beeline back to tepid convention.