Hard times

Appaloosa takes a sprawling, scenic look at the Old West | Sam Thielman

New Line Cinema

Gunfights are usually over in the time it takes to read this sentence. Of course, realism does not always make for good drama, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly would be about a tenth of its glorious three-hour running time if it skimped on the trickling beads of sweat and the twitching fingers.

But Ed Harris, who co-wrote, directed, and stars in Appaloosa, has other things to contend with besides who can outdraw whom, mostly because the answer is always the same: Virgil Cole (Harris himself), a man who's been wearing a black hat for too long. At one point, Virgil and his partner Everett (Viggo Mortensen) lie wounded on the ground after dispatching three opponents, and Everett remarks on how quickly it was over. "Everybody could shoot," Virgil groans.