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After re-writing my review of "Appaloosa" to include a lengthy philosophical-- which is what classification is, IMO-- discussion of what tags the movie should get, (I eventually settled for historical: drama), I decided to write reviews for all of the movies of Ed Harris which I've seen, which is actually only three-- Appaloosa, Apollo 13, and A History of Violence. And, unlike "Apollo 13", this is certainly *not* a Tom Hanks movie, and, although it does include Viggo Mortensen, which made it more attractive, of course, to the Peter Jackson fanboy that I was when I saw this.... (I was actually planning on seeing "Hidalgo", and, uh-- "Van Helsing", out of basically the same motivation, but I was such a lazy sort when it came to movies-- I was more of a gamer-- that in the end I missed both of them.... Although I suppose that that's sorta indifferent to me now), It actually doesn't have any more to do with John Tolkien than, well.... Peter Jackson!
So-- Ed Harris, and Viggo Mortensen. It's interesting to think of who isn't in this movie: Tom Cruise. I think, from my limited experience of his work, that Tom wouldn't really want to be in a movie like this. It's not verbal enough for him; he likes to talk sometimes.... Whereas these guys, don't, really. I mean, Viggo--as King Arathorn!-- gives a battle-speech or two in the Peter Jackson movies, but that's not quite his thing, not really what he likes. But Tom Cruise has the *relish* for that sort of thing-- not a battle-speech, exactly, but the sort of speech that you give in an action movie, maybe. The dramatic flare, the mixing of words with deeds.... Like gunpowder in ale.
But Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen are both very quiet men.... They are quiet, physical men.... And I guess that they like to drink their ale straight.
.... I'm not sure what else to say about it, but I suppose that I probably learned something.... And I suppose that that must count for something, right?
Ok, just one more thing, to kinda geek out on you: a Tom Cruise movie, is a bit like a fighting RPG, a talking-and-fighting game, like "Jade Empire", where you do ninja tricks and combat and stuff, and then you stop and you talk with your dudes about what's behind you, and what's ahead of you, and then you walk to the next combat, to do more fighting and jumping and kicking, and so on. An Ed Harris movie, (or should I say Ed Harris & Viggo Mortensen? They're paired-- one way or the other, in two of the three movies of Ed's that's I've seen, and it's a certainly a more potent pairing than that of Harris and *Hanks*, you know....) It's more gritty-- it's more like "Halo": you shoot people, you run forward while getting shot at, you nab the ammo off of the corpse, and you reload and fire, and you basically just worry about where to shoot and what to shoot with-- you don't talk with your party members about why they left Japan or what it was like learning to be a samurai.... Does that make sense?
And I was always much better charting out my character's leveling-up upgrades-- *magical fantasy-y leveling-up sound*-- than I was at running from cover-to-cover, where the only reward was to end up with as much health and ammo as you started with.... I mean, I kinda sucked at running from cover to cover, to be honest.... I mean, I understood the *idea*....
Yeah, I probably learned something from this movie.
I learned to stay really far the fuck away from Ed Harris....
{Jack Nicholson: *neurotic bullshit joke* Ed Harris: *punches him* Julia Roberts: *covers mouth* *starts to cry* *thinks: I will --never-- recover from this!*}
(Maybe it really is better to have villains with fako names, like-- Sarris!)
(9/10)
