GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #480: APPALOOSA

Hitch and Virgil, one of the best Western duos ever.

 

I love the movie, Appaloosa. It's a Western served up just the way I like it: laconic, brutal, funny and sometimes unusual. Ed Harris (who also directed it!) and Viggo Mortensen put in amazing performances as Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, a couple of men who go from town to town, cleaning up the criminal elements. They arrive in Appaloosa to do just that, and things get complicated fast.

I just finished reading the book, and I'm surprised by how loyal the movie is to the source material. The dialogue is word for word. I'm not kidding when I say it's verbatim. Some of the circumstances are different, but the dialogue is the same. It's by Robert B. Parker, and I like his work. I'd only ever read the Spenser books, so it was nice to see him veer away from business as usual.

The one thing I didn't like about the movie is a spoiler, so if you haven't seen it, skip this paragraph. Hitch knows that Virgil won't kill a man outside of the law. (Even though Virgil made the law himself.) So when Bragg (Jeremy Irons) turns out to be a bit smarter than they thought, and trying to weasel his way into Virgil's girlfriend's skirts, Hitch figures that he's the one who has to deal with the situation. So he kills Bragg in the streets and rides away on his own. The voiceover, in Hitch's voice, tells us why he did that. The book doesn't need to explain things, but the movie thought maybe the viewers wouldn't get it.

But that's not why I'm talking about this movie. It's because I discovered, holy shit, there is a series of books about Hitch and Virgil! Which means I have to find them and devour them ASAP. I wonder if Ed Harris is aware of this. I hope so, and I hope he plans on returning to Virgil Cole (and bringing Viggo Mortensen with him). I like to think they hit it off while filming A History of Violence (now *there* is a movie with zero fidelity to the source material) and hang out every once in a while. Maybe they even discussed doing a sequel to Appaloosa. Maybe they more than discussed it.

I hope so. The world needs more Hitch and Virgil.

One more thing. I'm not going to say I didn't like it, but I think it could have been done better. I think Jeremy Irons was miscast as Bragg. I still like it with him in it, but it would have been much better if Randall Tex Cobb played him. That's how I saw him in the book.