The Bottom Line

Appaloosa

Directed by: Ed Harris
Starring: Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renée Zellweger
Rated: R for some violence and language.
Parental Notes: This is a very mild R, and I suspect it got that rating because of a sequence in which two naked people are seen from a distance, from behind, rather than because of a few instances of swearing and a couple of brief gunfights. Should be fine for mature preteens and teenagers.

"Appaloosa" is an old-school western, from its craggy heroes to its simple storyline. There is a wealth of character and emotion packed into the quiet scenes, and the few gunfights are quick and efficient.

At the heart of the film is a friendship, one of those long, close friendships that results in two people who don't finish each other's sentences because they hardly have to speak to each other at all anymore. Glances and the occasional brief exchange are all they need because they have been working together so long. Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen) and Virgil Cole (Ed Harris) are peace keepers, gunslingers who are hired by towns to take care of the bad guys.

Harris and Mortensen inhabit their characters completely, and every little motion is meaningful. Hitch and Cole have been working together for over a decade, and are sure of each other and their roles in the partnership, and the two actors bring that to life. There's a confidence in the two men, a straight-forwardness that makes them fascinating to watch.

The town of Appaloosa, which is beset by a gang of ruffians led by the nastily intelligent Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons), isn't shown in enough detail to get a good feel for it. It's big enough to have several businesses, but small enough to be a frontier town and not a city. The details aren't as important as its archetypal existence, providing the setting for the events of the film. It's dusty and populated by curious children and cautious townfolk; it has a saloon and a train station and a dry goods store and a hotel; that is all it needs.

Virgil and Everett essentially take over the town as Marshall and Deputy Marshal, respectively. They make laws and enforce them: break the law, and you go to jail. Resist arrest, and you get shot dead on the spot. Bragg loses a small group of his men to Virgil and Everett's law enforcement and shows up to negotiate with the newcomers. Virgil is not intimidated, and we know from that moment that things will not end well between the two men.

Irons' performance is (aside from his oddly inconsistent accent) a fascinating one to watch. Bragg is cunning and intelligent, but he's not just an intellectual: the film opens with him shooting three men in cold blood. He's a nasty piece of work, a man out to get everything he can for himself and willing to eliminate obstacles regardless of what the law says about his methods.

Things are made more complicated by the appearance of the widowed Allison French (Renée Zellweger), who captures Virgil's heart in an instant. There is, of course, more to her than meets the eye, and her presence turns everything on its head. One gets the feeling that Virgil and Everett have cleaned bad guys out of little towns like Appaloosa a hundred times and all those adventures have been the same; "Appaloosa" is the tale of the adventure that went differently.

It isn't a loud or an action-packed film; everyone in the movie is a good shot, and that means the gunfights are over quickly. More is said in the silences between the dialog than when the characters are talking. This is not a big popcorn movie, it's a quiet examination of the effects of a series of events on two characters and their friendship -- and it does a beautiful job of that.

Eagle Eye

Directed by: D.J. Caruso
Starring: Shia LeBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Rosario Dawson, Billy Bob Thornton, Michael Chiklis
Rated: PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence, and for language.
Parental Notes: This is a pretty violent film and the killing of hundreds of police officers and civilians is taken very lightly. None of the violence is graphic, however -- there's very little blood or particular nastiness about it.

"Eagle Eye" is a standard summer movie come a little late. It has all the ingredients: two unlikely folks thrown together for an adventure, a powerful villain, lots of explosions and gunfights, and a touch of romance. It's also greatly improved if you disengage your logic and suspend your disbelief.

Jerry Shaw (Shia LeBeouf, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull") is a slacker, a twenty-something guy who works at Copy Cabana and makes his spending money by bluffing at poker with his coworkers. He's more than a little surprised when he finds his bank account in the high six figures and his apartment full of weapons and bomb-making materials. He's even more surprised when a woman's voice on his cellphone warns him to run, as the FBI is on his way. He doesn't, and is taken into custody briefly -- the woman arranges for his escape and informs him that if he does not do what she says, he will be killed.

Meanwhile, single mother Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monoghan, "Made of Honor") has put her young son on a train for a trip with his orchestra and is out on the town with her girlfriends. The woman calls her too, and informs her that if she does not obey, her son's train will be derailed. After a few flashy displays of the caller's power, Rachel and Jerry are working together, stepped through a series of seemingly unrelated tasks by the ever-present and always watching voice. She can always see them, she can reach them through any cell phone, and she can control everything from traffic lights to the cruise control on their car.

Monoghan and LeBeouf are solid leads for this sort of movie. Their roles are not terribly challenging for the most part, but they handle them well and convey the fright and anger that comes from being threatened by a stranger believably, which is all they need to do in a film of this sort.

As Rachel and Jerry struggle to evade law enforcement and do what the mysterious woman wants, FBI Agent Thomas Morgan (Billy Bob Thornton, "Mr. Woodcock") and Air Force investigator Zoe Perez (Rosario Dawson, "Death Proof") struggle to figure out what the heck is going on. As they slowly put the pieces together and the mysterious caller's identity is finally revealed, all the seemingly unrelated pieces of the plot come together. Mind you, the pieces show that the villain behind the events took one of the least efficient routes to get the goal accomplished, but that's not the point. Why go for efficiency when you can have mystery and explosions?

Director DJ Caruso ("Disturbia") wisely keeps the action coming, interspersing it with only enough dialog and emotion to keep us identifying with the main characters. There are gunfights, explosions, close encounters with death, and all sorts of insane stunts. "Eagle Eye" is a roller coaster of a movie, a big summer action flick with a vein of science fiction in it. No, it's not plausible (except for a few elements here and there), but nobody should go to see a movie like this expecting plausibility or realism. We go to movies like this to be entertained while disengaging our brains for a couple of hours. "Eagle Eye succeeds at that admirably.