'Appaloosa' overcomes slow start

They're marketing the Western "Appaloosa" as being in the tradition of "Unforgiven," which is almost completely wrong.

The movie isn't a downer, and it isn't revisionist. In fact, it's made expressly for the lover of the movie-Western tradition, somebody who can recognize and enjoy its riffs on well-known genre titles.

At the same time, it has some of the antique-reproduction fussiness of some recent Westerns - pretty shots, period detail, interesting facial hair, old-timey dialogue, but every scene has a "look, we're making a Western!" staginess to it.

That's nearly every scene. After about an hour, I was ready to roll on "Appaloosa," adapted from a Robert Parker book about two gunslingers (director Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen) who run a "peacekeeping business" in the old West.

But if you stick with this movie, the artifice eventually falls away and you get caught up in the central drama, built around the friendship between lawman for hire Virgil Cole (Harris) and his partner Everett (Mortensen).

Parker, author of the Spenser detective novels, has been writing for years about masculine friendships between warrior-type guys, a theme that Harris understands and eventually captures in his slow, mannered movie.

It opens with Virgil and Everett riding to rescue the town of Appaloosa, where a ruthless, corrupt businessman (Jeremy Irons) and his armed thugs have taken over.

The lawmen dictate their usual terms to spineless town fathers (James Gammon, Timothy Spall): Give us total control, we'll give you security. And we'll probably kill all the bad guys.

This sets up a showdown, though "Appaloosa" takes its sweet time getting there. Meanwhile, it probes the Virgil-Everett dynamic (their ultralaconic repartee is often funny), which alters when confirmed bachelor Virgil falls for a pretty new widow (Renee Zellweger).

There is more to this woman than meets the eye (no jokes, Zellweger haters), and it's not terribly difficult for the astute viewer to pull up the movie's concealed plot threads.

What's surprising about "Appaloosa," though, is the way it becomes more interesting after its secrets are revealed. It isn't the narrative bombshells that surprise us, but the way Virgil and Everett absorb them. "Appaloosa" evolves into an offbeat study of male honor codes and the less codified realm of love and sex, with echoes of Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove."

The first hour bored me nearly to tears, but I'm glad I stuck it out, since the last half hour is fresh, diverting and original in the context of a neo-Western. Or a neo anything. *

Produced by Ed Harris, Robert Knott, Ginger Sledge; directed by Ed Harris, written by Ed Harris, Robert Knott, music by Jeff Beal, distributed by Warner Bros.