Growing up my least favorite genre was the western. They were all the same to me. I enjoyed Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars trilogy starring Clint Eastwood, and I also liked Unforgiven… starring Clint Eastwood… but for the most part I would rather watch any other kind of movie than a western. The funny thing is that now in 2008 I still feel the same way. I mean, I’m never exactly excited to sit down for a western. Yet I find myself liking almost every western I see. In the last couple years I’ve seen The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, two pieces of superb entertainment that are nothing less than masterpieces. (One of these days I will trek through all the John Ford films.) And then in the last few years we’ve gotten brilliant contemporary westerns like No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, and Brokeback Mountain, and the old school style western 3:10 to Yuma, last year’s near-perfect old-fashioned ride through the west alongside Christian Bale and Russell Crowe. While it’s nowhere near as exciting as the more action-packed 3:10 to Yuma, Ed Harris’s new film Appaloosa, which definitely screams old fashioned in every way, is a quiet and consistently involving western with outstanding performances by Harris, Viggo Mortensen, and the intimidating Jeremy Irons. The story is simple, and the emphasis is mostly just on the friendship between Harris and Mortensen. A storyline involving a love triangle with the mousy-looking Renee Zellweger (never a welcome addition to any film) is fairly pedestrian and weak, but the turmoil these boys go through in going up against the villain played by Irons is sensational. I mostly admired that Harris doesn’t allow the story to get too complicated or Hollywood-ized, instead allowing events to play out at a slow and immensely watchable pace. When the movie’s over, very little sticks with the viewer, which in turn makes the film not on the same level as all these other films I’ve mentioned. Even so, Appaloosa is a solid motion picture that re-affirms my belief that maybe my tastes are changing a bit, and that maybe westerns aren’t so bad after all.