Appaloosa

Director: Ed Harris
Year Released: 2008
Rating: 2.0

Standard Western plotting with few bonus features: lawmen Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen are hired to track down and arrest rogue landowner Jeremy Irons; meanwhile a very fickle Renée Zellweger latches onto whatever omega male is in the vicinity (and, at one point, does get kidnapped). I'm all in favor of the return of the Western - if, indeed, the Western ever went anywhere - but I'm going to go on a limb and say that there probably isn't much in the Robert Parker novel to make this either a potent mood piece (like Unforgiven) or a stunning action picture, with Harris trying desperately for the former and ending up with a perfectly average - and maybe even a little flat - 'guy movie' - there are two female roles in there, but they're both technically whores (Zellweger gets called a whore, pretends to be a house wife, but will go with anyone; Mortensen's part-time lover actually is a whore). A better director would have added more panache, but the core would have still been the same.