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Though there is some great direction and characterization, Appaloosa is simply too scattered to completely work.

Watching Appaloosa, it’s clear this is actor Ed Harris’s first stab at writing/directing: There’s simply too much that goes on that isn’t connected to anything else. As it so happens, I’ve been reading David Mamet’s Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business, a collection of brief essays from the master writer/director. And just one hour after Appaloosa I come across this paragraph:

When, again, is a scene superfluous? When it does not advance the progression given at the outset as the film’s purpose. What happens during this side trip? The audience’s attention wanders. They have been jolted out of participation, and the filmmaker has lost his most important ally: their uncritical, which is to say, engaged, participation.

More simply: “Cut everything that isn’t the story.” And while there are (always) exceptions to this hard-and-fast rule, it is nonetheless a good one to follow. Appaloosa never quite escapes the weight of its own excess.

Harris plays Virgil Cole, an aged gun-for-hire who, with his partner Everett (Viggo Mortensen), takes jobs securing towns from bandits, raiders, and other ne’er-do-wells. They are in fact so experienced at this type of work that they have ready-made contracts for the town aldermen of Appaloosa to sign, granting them limitless power to create and enforce laws. Reluctant but fearful, the aldermen agree. No, Appaloosa is not a critique of the Patriot Act—though you might think so for the first half hour.

Appaloosa’s problem is Randal Bragg (Jeremy Irons), a wealthy rancher whose ranch hands run rampant over the town. The last sheriff who came to take some of Bragg’s men away wound up dead, so deadlier men are needed. Men like Virgil and Everett. Sure enough, Virgil and Cole aren’t in Appaloosa but a day before they’ve turned some of Bragg’s men into so much cooling meat.

The rest might be easy but for one fly in the ointment: Ms. Allie French (Renee Zellweger), a newcomer to Appaloosa who soon steals Virgil’s heart. She’s sweet and playful, he’s polite but serious; their first “date” sees Virgil beating down a harmless drunkard after she pushes one joke too far. In this post-Wild Bunch and Unforgiven world, every Western must portray its gunslinger hero as a man nearly consumed whole by his affinity for violence. Things worsen when Allie makes a pass at Everett and Bragg makes his play to escape justice.

All of this is assembled loosely, with numerous asides that feel perfunctory, or ungraceful. The movie as a whole is beautiful; Harris can, if nothing else, frame a shot and tell a story with it. The dialogue, too, has that dry wit and ornamentation that’s become the norm for Westerns—masking threats and insults in niceties.

And the performances are, in places, exceptional. Harris and Mortensen have an easy chemistry, and the scenes of them simply talking—often exchanging monosyllabic words or simple gestures or grunts—are inspired and authentic. Zellweger, too, begins sweet and blameless and becomes something else, a woman whose nature is at odds with her behavior.

Harris may well be an “actor’s director,” because even with the assistance of co-writer Robert Knott, he was not up to the task of cutting Appaloosa down to a tidier, streamlined size. There is some great work here, but the sum total is a wash.

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