Review of "Appaloosa," DVD version

 Review of

Appaloosa, DVD version

Four out of five stars

Good rendition of classic Parker characters

 Robert B. Parker is known for writing action/adventure stories with a strong hero/sidekick format. What makes the stories work very well is that the sidekick is a powerful personality, for example the Spenser/Hawk stories.  Parker also created a series set in the old west that features Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch.

 This movie describes an adventure where the two become lawmen in a wild frontier town. Both men are very good with guns and their reputations do a great deal to calm the town. Their worldview undergoes change when an attractive woman named Libby comes to town with very little money. Virgil is quickly smitten by her, but those feelings create immediate problems.

 A powerful local man named Randall Bragg killed some lawmen and one of the witnesses to the crime agrees to testify against him. Bragg is a powerful man, but Virgil and Everett manage to arrest him and get him to trial. However, men hired by Bragg use Virgil’s feelings for Libby to get Bragg released and the hunt is on.

 Libby proves to be much more of an opportunist than at first appears and there are conflicts within Virgil and between Virgil and Everett. However, they manage to keep their partnership intact, even when Bragg receives a full pardon from the U. S. President. At the end, Everett takes it upon himself to confront Bragg in a way that does not jeopardize Virgil’s role as a lawman or his relationship with Libby.

Virgil and Everett show a great deal of loyalty to each other, it is a very strong hero/sidekick relationship. The movie captures the essence of the two characters as Parker created them for his series about the two gunfighters. Even gunfighters have feelings and emotions, a point strong here yet sometimes lost in the television westerns when they were at their peak of popularity.  Rather than subservient, Everett is a strong personality rather than a fawning supporting figure.

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