I just finished watching Appaloosa - a good, but not great, Western starring Ed Harris (directed and helped to write the screenplay), Viggo Mortensen, Renee Zellweger (atrocious) and Jeremy Irons (underused). What kept the movie from being downright lousy was a brilliant performance from Viggo Mortensen.
Side note: Not that it needs pointing out, but I'm going to say it anyway: Viggo Mortensen is consistently excellent in everything he does. His bathhouse fight scene in Eastern Promises, again not a great movie, was one of the most disturbing and, at the same time, impressive physical performances I've ever seen from an onscreen actor. Also, tattoos never looked cooler.
Anyway, I love Westerns. No other American film genre captures the raw humanity of what it means to struggle for survival in a hostile and lonely world (I love zombie movies for pretty much the same reason). But Appaloosa got me thinking about great roles and why I prefer some Westerns over others. For example, Henry Fonda in My Darling Clementine, while a good movie, didn't captivate me to the extent that I think he should have and, for that reason, I don't think of it as one of the greatest Westerns in film history.
With that in mind, I decided to list my 10 favorite performances in Western history (note: I only counted one movie per actor or else the list would have been filled with Clint Eastwood):
1) Gary Cooper - High Noon
2) Clint Eastwood - Unforgiven
4) John Wayne - True Grit
3) William Holden - The Wild Bunch
4) Henry Fonda - Once Upon a Time in the West
5) Humphrey Bogart - The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
6) Yves Montand - The Wages of Fear (which is a Western in disguise)
7) Val Kilmer - Tombstone
8) Paul Newman - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
9) Alan Ladd - Shane
10) Viggo Mortensen - Appaloosa
1 comment:
Today, on ICU rounds, my attending called me "Blondie" and I said, "You see in this world there's two kinds of people my friend - those with loaded guns, and those who dig."
Probably the highlight of my day.
Post a Comment