Virgil puts on the marshal badge and has Everet as his deputy. They lock the town down as they get closer to their goal. A trio of Bragg's men comes to town and promptly get themselves shot down. This leads to a showdown between Bragg, Virgil, and Everet.
In the midst of this drama a new player enters. Mrs. Allison French (Renee Zellweger) arrives in town, immediately catching the eye of Virgil. He steps into the picture, smitten with the widow, who we learn in short order is not a whore. Virgil is so taken with her that the two begin a relationship, leading to Virgil leaving his life of freedom and travel by building a home for the two of them to live in.
There is plenty of development on both plot fronts. We learn more about Mrs. French and her motives for what she does, nothing particularly bad, but her personality definitely has its quirks. We also follow Bragg through a big character shift that does not sit well with Everet.
Now, I am not going to dig deeper into the characters and their specific roles through the middle and down the stretch of the film, as that is what this film is about. It is also what makes this film such a frustrating experience to me. So much is offered up to like about Appaloosa that I almost feel bad about not liking it as much as I really want to. I just found so much of it to be dull. Very little of any real consequence happens, therefore I feel as if I, as a member of the audience, have been relegated to being on the outside looking in, never feeling completely involved.
What makes Appaloosa so frustrating is that there is so much to like. However, everything I like is tempered by a story that does not know where to focus. When we should be looking at Virgil and Allison we look at Bragg; when we should be looking at Bragg we look at Virgil and Allison. For all I know this is how it goes down in the Robert Parker novel, but it strikes me as unfocused. I wish that the screenplay was a bit tighter at blending everything together.
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