A buddy tale in the old West

The place: Appaloosa, a lawless frontier town in New Mexico. The time: 1882. The Man: Virgil Cole, hired gun.

Ed Harris directs himself as Virgil in Appaloosa, a western quarried from the same glowing block of sandstone as its filmmaker/star. Viggo Mortensen offers solid support as Virgil's lieutenant, Everett Hitch, who sees much, says little and shoots straight - both with guns and words.

The men are devoted to each other and to the task of protecting the townspeople of Appaloosa from a terrorizing rancher named Bragg (Jeremy Irons). But their bond is tested by the arrival of Mrs. French (Renée Zellweger), a citified widow of unknown origin who snares Virgil in the crook of her dimple.

As adapted by Harris and Robert Knott from the novel by Robert Parker, Appaloosa is an archetypal western with touches of the modern buddy comedy. Though it falls short of these classics, it is a little bit Destry Rides Again and a little bit more Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

To his film's peril Harris, who made his directorial debut with Pollock, is more attentive to his actors than to his tempo. Although beautifully shot by cinematographer Dean Semler, with every sequence so lovingly framed and composed that it would make a fantastic still, the unhurried film proceeds at the pace of Virgil's stiff-legged stride. Sometimes a western just needs to gallop.

Harris plays Virgil as a professional prone to stutters of the mouth and flutters of the heart. Inevitably it is Everett who helps him complete his sentences and his comprehension of how the world works.

On paper, Zellweger's Allie French is a fascinating creature - flirty and romantic, yet realistic. But on screen the woman who comes between the two friends - and also between them and their job - is a flibbertigibbet whose weathervane personality must be patiently explained by Everett to Virgil. Would but her character was less written and more realized.

The supporting players are uniformly strong, particularly Timothy Spall as the rabbity townie who hires Virgil and Irons as the tyrannical rancher. (Like Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood, Irons does an uncanny vocal impersonation of John Huston.)

First and last, Appaloosa is the slow-but-sure story of the friendship between Virgil and Everett, one a man of action surprised by emotion, the other a man of emotion surprised by action. Their friendship is one that thrives in long passages of silence, short bursts of violence, and a most considered act of empathy.