‘Appaloosa’

Even before we see a thing in “Appaloosa,” we hear. And know exactly where we are: home on the range, back where the movies began.

These days, those of us who love Westerns don’t get much chance to visit the lone prairie. Every now and again, however, along comes a movie that slakes our thirst for Stetsons and six-shooters.

Last year, for example, Christian Bale and Russell Crowe rode the “3:10 to Yuma,” a rip-snortin’ remake of a 1957 favorite with the firepower of a contemporary action thriller.

And now, Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen — who played mortal enemies in 2005’s stunning “A History of Violence” — turn up as devoted, and deadly, saddle pals in “Appaloosa.”

They’re not quite Butch and Sundance, but “Appaloosa” (which Harris also directed and co-wrote — he even warbles a tune over the closing credits) definitely sticks to its guns.

Unlike modern movies full of rapid-fire pacing and hyperkinetic action, “Appaloosa” rides to a different, more deliberate rhythm. You can hear the creak of saddle leather — and catch the glint in a good guy’s eye before he stops a lily-livered varmint dead in his tracks.

In “Appaloosa,” that lily-livered varmint is ruthless rancher Randall Bragg (an appropriately imperious Jeremy Irons), who’s accustomed to riding roughshod over everyone in, and around, the title New Mexico town.

But when he shoots the town marshal and deputies trying to bring his hired guns to justice, the city fathers (skittish Brit Timothy Spall and gravel-voiced James Gammon) realize that somebody’s got to stop Bragg. And that they’re hardly the men to do it.

Enter gunman Virgil Cole (Harris) and his devoted shotgun rider, Everett Hitch (Mortensen), two veteran town-tamers who always get the job done — as long as no so-called civilized folks try to interfere.

Virgil and Everett have ridden together for so long, they don’t need to talk much. It’s just as well, considering Virgil’s limited vocabulary, which he’s always trying to improve by reading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance.” (As if he needs to read about it when he embodies it.)

Good thing Everett, a West Point graduate who couldn’t stomach the soul-deadening regimentation of military life, is around to correct Virgil’s pronunciation — and watch Virgil’s back.

There’s no threat they can’t handle. Unless, of course, it’s winsome, piano-playing widow Allie French (Renée Zellweger), newly arrived in town, whose dainty refinement has Virgil at “Howdy.”

Virgil’s growing feelings for Allie leave the marshal in an unexpectedly vulnerable state — because, as he reminds Everett, “Feelings get you killed.”

Pard, it’s a Western. Plenty of things can get you killed.

But, true to its frontier roots, “Appaloosa” boasts no blood-spurting overkill, no madcap mayhem to distract us from death’s stark finality.

That’s hardly a surprise, considering Harris has ridden this trail before. As star and producer of a terrific 1996 cable-TV version of Zane Grey’s “Riders of the Purple Sage,” Harris demonstrated his affinity for embodying lean, leathery gunslingers — and timeless, elemental conflict.

His adaptation of “Spenser” creator Robert B. Parker’s novel (scripted with actor Robert Knott, who co-starred in Harris’ 2000 directorial debut, “Pollock”) also consciously echoes classic oaters from such genre masters as John Ford, Howard Hawks and Sam Peckinpah.

But that very familiarity always has been an essential part of the Western’s enduring appeal. Like a tale told around a crackling campfire, every Western offers variations on the same basic ingredients, from the wide-open-spaces setting to the inevitable climactic showdown.

Yet “Appaloosa” serves up some mighty interesting twists on its time-honored themes, exploring the unspoken but unshakable bond between Virgil and Everett with understated wit as well as heartfelt conviction.

It also introduces a potentially intriguing alternative to the Western’s traditionally limited female characters, who are generally either chaste marriage material or soiled doves.

The flirtatious Allie’s somewhere in between. So, for that matter, is Everett’s favorite female companion: Katie (Ariadna Gil, Mortensen’s leading lady in the Spanish swashbuckler “Alatriste”), a saloon gal who knows, all too well, that a woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do.

This latter aspect would have far more impact if Zellweger weren’t so coy and obvious; the role of Allie is so underwritten that whoever’s filling it must provide what the script doesn’t, but Zellweger’s simpering only serves to undermine her character’s impact.

In another movie, that might be fatal.

But “Appaloosa’s” a Western, which makes Virgil and Everett the resident power couple.

They’re powerful indeed, thanks to Harris and Mortensen, who blend easy camaraderie and coiled-spring intensity with throwaway grace. Virgil’s the undisputed leader, stoic and implacable, but only because Everett would rather be the wry, sly sidekick — Doc Holliday to Virgil’s Wyatt Earp, if you will. (Or, for all you “Lonesome Dove” fans, he’s a more laconic Gus McCrae to Virgil’s less grouchy Woodrow Call.)

As the cowboys say, they’ll do to ride the river with — maybe even more than once.

After all, Parker reunites Virgil and Everett in his latest book, “Resolution,” so Harris and Mortensen might meet up again sometime, somewhere west of “Appaloosa.”

And even if they (and we) don’t, at least they ride off into the sunset, riding tall in the saddle.

Contact movie critic Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272.