I don't often read westerns, but I wanted to read Robert B. Parker's Appaloosa before seeing the movie. Parker may not be Larry McMurtry, but he knows how to spin a good yarn about the wild west. I especially loved the dialog; it sounded like Sam Elliott doing a Coors commercial. Everett Hitch, the charismatic narrator, and the vocabulary-challenged Virgil Cole are gunslinging lawmen-for-hire. They come to Appaloosa to arrest Russell Bragg, who has recently murdered the town's marshal and one of his deputies. Cole is the man in charge, and Hitch hitches his wagon to Cole's, so to speak. No self-respecting western would be complete without a woman to stir things up, and Allie French does just that, earning her keep at the local hotel with less-than-stellar piano playing. There's a scene where the three main characters ride out to look at a herd of horses, led by an appaloosa stallion, who fights off a chestnut stallion to protect his brood. This scene plays out among the humans in the end, though not exactly in the way you might expect. I can't wait to see the movie, and I'll be putting the sequel, Resolution, on my reading list.
No comments:
Post a Comment