Dude here.

I was reminiscing with my wife the other day about products from my younger days, one of those “Whatever happened to…?” sessions where you ping-pong older products and events and names off each other.  For most people, it’s just a happy, harmless remembrance of things passed.  It’s a little different for me.

Most of the time I find the things I loved as a kid now stink.  Take the film Spaceballs, for example.  I knew that movie nearly line by line as a kid.  Now I can barely tolerate it just sitting on the shelf across the room.  Or Spaghetti-O’s.  Terrific yumminess as an 8-year-old, horrific awfulness today.  Or my old guinea pig.  When I dug him up in my mom’s backyard, that was a powerful stench.  And when I do find something I still like today that I also enjoyed as a boy, I often overdose on nostalgia and end up ruining whatever it was that I liked.

The last time we did this, for example, I recalled my love for some old monster-themed breakfast cereals called Boo Berry, Franken Berry, and Count Chocula.  They were introduced in the 1970s by General Mills, and I fondly remembered eating them quite often on Saturday mornings while in a zombie trance, packing my cheeks with sugary, marshmallow goodness until I was one or two blood cells from a  hyperglycemic coma as the Smurfs once again frolicked on the TV and foiled whatever lame scheme Gargamel had cooked up to capture and eat them.  (My favorite Smurfs episode:  the one where Lazy gets bitten on the keister by the purple fly.)

My recollection, of course, led to an all-out scouring of local megastores in hopes of scoring a box of each leg of the monster trifecta.  The Count Chocula was readily available, but the other two were tough finds.  So tough, in fact, that once I did find them, I felt compelled to stock up.  Eventually I ended up with a ex-Y2K bunker stacked to the ceiling with boxes of the stuff, which meant I ate monster cereal every day from approximately 2003 until yesterday, finishing the last bowl of Franken Berry just as the menu screen for this week’s feature, Taken, popped up.

Taken stars Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills, some sort of ex-government badass. He has an ex-wife Lenore (Famke Jansen), a name not heard since Poe wrote The Raven, who has remarried into big money and treats him like garbage even though she knows that he’s some sort of ex-government badass. That takes guts and stupidity. Their 17-year-old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace of Lost) lives with her mother, and we learn that Bryan actually sacrificed his governmental badass status to move closer to her. Early in the film, Kim and Lenore essentially badger Bryan into allowing Kim to travel to France with her 19-year-old friend Amanda despite his somewhat irrational and paranoid objections. Of course, his irrational and paranoid objections are validated when Kim and Amanda are abducted by evil, human trafficking Albanians before they even unpack their bags. Fortunately Bryan is on the phone with his daughter as the abduction occurs, and he’s soon jetting off to Paris to track down those dirty Albanians and rescue the girls.

I didn’t know Albanians were into human trafficking, although I’ll admit that I know very little about Albania in general. In fact, all I know on it comes from an old Cheers episode where Coach tries to help Sam pass a night school geography class by teaching him facts about Albania through a song to the tune of “When the Saints Go Marching In”: Al-ban-i-a, Al-ban-i-a, you border on the Ad-ri-atic. Your land is mostly mountainous, and your chief export is chrome.

I’ll admit that the premise of Taken sounds pretty contrived, because it is pretty contrived. But if you can swallow the contrivance through the first 25 minutes, you’re in for a real treat because what follows is pure adrenaline and butt-kicking fun. One of the best moments is Bryan’s threat to the kidnappers moments after they’ve nabbed Kim: “I will find you, and I will kill you.” Coming from Neeson, with his steely glare and rockin’ cool accent, I believed it right away. Although I frequently believe people with accents no matter what they say…except for Indian accents of course. They’ve burned me too many times on computer customer service. But if you told me in an Irish accent that you can levitate cars, I’d ask to join your frequent levitator program.

Soon Bryan is using his specially acquired skills to tear through Paris, pleasingly disposing of numerous bad guys in various smile-inducing ways. His no-nonsense and ruthless approach made me openly cheer a couple times, and there’s one stunning moment when his aggression caused both my wife and I to simultaneously and delightedly yell “What the @#@%?!!” But his actions also draw the ire and attention of Paris police uppity-up Jean-Claude, a former colleague and now possible enabler of the Albanian buttheads who swiped Kim. So while tracking down the kidnappers, Bryan also has to stay a step ahead of the French police. Although, let’s face it, the French police are always a bunch of bumbling Inspector Clousseaus on film. Taken doesn’t give them much credibility either, though their subplot does give us the WTF?! moment I referenced earlier.

It’s a very satisfying film, watching scores of scummy lowlifes get their comeuppance, although it does deprive us of what would have been the most gratifying moment of all; Bryan telling his rotten, bitter ex-wife “I told you so.” The fact that he never does it makes him a better man than I am. I derive great pleasure from letting my wife know she was wrong, probably because I so rarely get to do so. And when I am fortunate enough to be right, it’s usually about something trivial like we’re out of eggs. It’s seldom something incredible like being abducted by Albanians. Still…very satisfying.

Taken doesn’t require a lot of thought, doesn’t try to make any social statements, and isn’t pretentious.  It’s just an adrenaline-soaked thrill ride, doubly fun on a monster cereal induced sugar rush.

Email me your favorite breakfast cereals, Saturday morning cartoons, praise or ridicule at dudeviews@yahoo.com.  

Until next time, the Dude is not in. 

• Movie:  Taken
• Genre:  Drama           
• Rating:  PG-13
• Running Time: 93 minutes
• Dude’s Rating:  Hearty Round of Applause

(Dude Brockhaus lives in New Haven, IN, with his wife Mackenzie and their own monster trifecta.)

• Dude’s Rating Scale

• Standing Ovation
• Hearty Round of Applause
• Golf Clap
• “Meh” and a Shoulder Shrug
• Booed
• Lustily Booed and Pelted with Garbage

Dude here.

It’s time for me to come out of the closet.  I’ve been living a lie, dear readers, hiding a dark secret that even some of those closest to me don’t know.  Oh sure, my immediate family’s been aware of it for quite sometime.  It was only a matter of time before they caught on, considering the numerous glistening, chiseled men sweating and strutting through the living room every week in their tight pants.  (Sometimes I go to the bar to see them, but since I have children it’s so much easier just to do it at home.)  I’m not sure how it happened, but I think maybe I was born this way.  Yes, as you’ve probably surmised by now, I’m a pro wrestling fan.

I’m joking about it, but there is still a stigma attached to a 35-year-old pro wrestling fan, even if there’s evidence that he has had sex a couple times (see aforementioned children).  I think that’s because most people still think of pro wrestling in terms of the 1970s, where 350 lb. hairy mounds of flab spent most of the “match” gasping for air and moving at the speed of idle while slack-jawed hilljacks guffawed and jeered, naively believing that a great big fat guy can be dropped on his neck repeatedly and suffer no real injuries.  But today’s wrestlers truly are athletes, even though they’re performing rather than competing, and the fans are now almost too clued in that this is entertainment rather than sport.  Some of the choreography executed by today’s wrestlers is truly incredible, and it often compels me to rewind and pause the DVR and call my wife in to watch whatever sick double reverse corkscrew moonsault Evan Bourne just pulled off, after which she’ll frequently give me an unenthusiastic “Yeah, that’s great” with requisite eye roll.  I imagine her lack of enthusiasm stems from the daily dresser-top elbow drops she took from her brothers growing up.

Certainly it’s hard to be a wrestling fan.  Because just when you think the “sport” has turned a corner and its focus has shifted to athletics and agility, they wind up doing some storyline where an 80-year-old woman gives birth to a hand (which honestly was a World Wrestling Entertainment storyline).  It’s hard to justify watching something that lowbrow, although less so these days with The Kardashians on the air…not to mention anything on VH1. 

Fortunately this week’s feature, The Wrestler, contains no hands birthed, no necrophilia, no kissing of bare butts, and no castration, all of which have been actual pro wrestling plotlines.  What The Wrestler does feature is an incredibly authentic and Oscar nominated performance from Mickey Rourke and an emotionally captivating story of a former pro wrestler clinging to his long lost glory.

Rourke plays Randy “The Ram” Robinson, once a world-famous wrestler known for his high flying “Ram Jam” finisher and legendary match against The Ayatollah.  Now 20 years later and far from fame’s spotlight, he works part time at a supermarket where he nearly has to beg for hours from a snide dweeb of a boss that Randy knows he could snap in two seemingly with a stern look.  But, as we soon learn, he needs the job because he can barely afford the rusty trailer he currently rents, so he really can’t indulge in breaking his boss into tiny pieces.

Randy still wrestles small shows on the weekends, and it’s early in the film at one of these shows where it’s hammered home just how much Randy misses the notoriety he once enjoyed.  Still revered by his fellow performers, we watch as Randy’s joints creak and pop and grind through his pre-match stretches while he and his opponent discuss the planned format for their upcoming match.  It’s a genuine look into the locker room camaraderie of small time and has-been wrestlers, a unique atmosphere of nostalgia, enthusiasm and sadness.

Randy’s life is paralleled by his stripper friend Cassidy (Marisa Tomei in an Oscar-nominated role) who, now in her 40s, is the oldest dancer at her club and always overshadowed by the younger girls.  Cassidy is the closest thing Randy has to a friend, though she keeps him at a distance and still charges him for lap dances…which is worth it, by the way, because Marisa Tomei is still smokin’ hot and incredibly appealing to balding, dumpy guys like me since her turn on Seinfeld a while back.

After a particularly brutal match, Randy’s age and poor lifestyle get the better of him, forcing him into full retirement and prompting him to try and reconcile with his adult daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood).  Stephanie is still pretty grumpy with Randy because he spent most of her childhood traveling the country and being thrown through folding tables.  I’d imagine it would be tough for a child knowing their father would rather be cracked in the melon with a steel chair than share their 5^th-year birthday cake.  Such is the temptation of fame, I suppose.  So can The Ram stay retired, or will he risk his daughter, friend and very life for one last turn in the spotlight?

I’ve never much cared for Mickey Rourke before, but his performance here was as raw and convincing and powerful as any I’ve seen, and it’s easily the best of his career.  His Randy is a tragic character who can’t seem to see an hour beyond the present, and even without flashbacks you can easily see how his shortsightedness and poor choices landed him in the gutter, much like my shortsightedness and poor choices have left me “paying off” $25k in credit card debt by writing a column for free.

But much like the Randy “The Ram” Robinson, I don’t do it for the money.  The notoriety’s the thing.  And now that I’m known the world over by tens of people, it’s surely only a matter of decades before this article becomes a cash cow and I can comfortably retire.  Besides, I still have it better than pro wrestlers because I don’t have another guy’s sweaty crotch in my face…too often.    

Email me your wrestling trivia, praise or ridicule at dudeviews@yahoo.com.  

Until next time, the Dude is not in. 

• Movie:  The Wrestler
• Genre:  Drama           
• Rating:  R
• Running Time: 109 minutes
• Dude’s Rating:  Hearty Round of Applause

(Dude “The Sloth” Brockhaus lives in New Haven, IN, with his three children and wife Mackenzie, all of whom are terribly, and rightfully, embarrassed when he does the Degeneration X crotch chop.)

     Dude’s Rating Scale

• Standing Ovation
• Hearty Round of Applause
• Golf Clap
• “Meh” and a Shoulder Shrug
• Booed
• Lustily Booed and Pelted with Garbage

Dude here.

To say I have an untraditional family might be an understatement.  I’ve always thought that Thanksgiving is a time for remembrance, reflection, and gratitude for the blessings you have.  Most families rise early and watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade together, celebrate with wonderful dinners and outdoor fun (if the weather cooperates), and then maybe in the evening they visit by the fire or pop in the first wholesome Christmas movie of the season.  That’s the way I’ve seen it unfold in every Lifetime and Hallmark Channel movie…um, not that I’ve ever watched those channels, but that’s what I’ve heard.  But we’re apparently not the prototypical family, because our Thanksgiving is usually a vastly different experience, and this year was no exception.

We did rise to watch the Thanksgiving Day parade, but we mostly mocked it.  Even our three-year-old smarmily declared “That’s not the real Santa.”  She also joined me in jeering Mark Harmon and Jimmy Smits during CBS’ worthless coverage, where the parade was an afterthought for two hours of unfunny jokes, mind-numbing interviews and, honestly, Jamie Kennedy’s grandfather attempting the old “pull my finger” gag.  It was painfully bad.

We also did celebrate with a wonderful dinner hosted by our cousins, but we arrived 30 minutes late with our carry-in dishes half cooked.  Thankfully, they still had their oven cranked up.  Unthankfully, while we waited for the casserole to brown, we were treated to the drunken TMZ-esque knowledge of our family loon who, fueled by her 6^th pre-dinner margarita, took it upon herself to inform us of the sexual habits and diseases of dead celebrities.  That’s a rough topic before noon.

And while we did pop in a movie later that evening, it wasn’t your typical holiday cheer fest.  Instead, we chose The Bank Job, a true story bank heist involving corrupt British police officers, corrupt British government officials, violent radicals, and pornographers.  Alright, maybe it doesn’t ring of yuletide fellowship, but it was a fine tale.

The Bank Job stars Jason Statham (The Transporter) as Terry Leather, a London car dealer presented with an opportunity to heist a major London bank by model Martine Love (Saffron Burrows).  Terry suspects and soon confirms that Martine has her own motives for the heist, but he can’t bring himself to pass on the opportunity of a lifetime.  Maybe he should have though, because the gang of criminals he assembles unwittingly stumble onto a bounty of scandalous photos and incriminating evidence that involves everyone from crime bosses to the Royal Family.  The aftermath of the heist sees Terry and his gang trying to survive and arrange a deal while being hunted simultaneously by MI-5 agents and underworld criminal thugs.

It’s actually a pretty fun film, although I highly suggest you brush up on your British phrases and Cockney colloquialisms before watching it.  Even with subtitles on, I had to pause and decode into American language several times.  Unfortunately, the Babel Fish translator doesn’t have an English-to-American option.  But I was able to figure out that when things “go pear shaped,” it’s not good.  And trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to know what a “12-inch sheep stabber” references.

Fans of Jason Statham films may be disappointed that he has no real action scenes here.  In fact, there aren’t many action scenes at all.  The strength of the film is its story, which might seem contrived and borderline ridiculous if it wasn’t apparently true.  The Bank Job is based off the 1971 Baker Street ransacking of Lloyd’s Bank, which led to a Scotland Yard investigation, the resignation of several top government officials, and a government imposed moratorium on press coverage of the event.

The supporting cast includes a great turn by Peter De Jersey as black radical Michael X.  He’s a man I wouldn’t want to cross anyway, but this is hammered home early on when Mr. X has some poor sap shackled in a slave collar.  It’s also a treat to watch David Suchet as pornographer Lew Vogel, whose safe deposit box had been holding a ledger with recorded payoffs to a bevy of dirty London cops.  He’s pretty wicked in his ruthless, violent pursuit of the incriminating ledger.  You’d think a man who spends that much time around naked women would be a happier, nicer person.

Who can say how much of the film is actually true, as the files on this incident have been ordered sealed until 2054…at which point they’ll probably be ordered resealed for another fifty years.  But it’s an intriguing tale nonetheless, and it turned out to be the perfect capper on yet another of my quirky family’s Thanksgivings.  

Email me your drunken relative holiday stories, Cockney colloquialisms, praise or ridicule at dudeviews@yahoo.com.  

Until next time, the Dude is not in. 

• Movie:  The Bank Job
• Genre:  Crime drama  
• Rating:  R
• Running Time: 111 minutes
• Dude’s Rating:  Hearty Round of Applause

(Dude Brockhaus lives in New Haven, IN, where his sedentary lifestyle has caused him to go pear-shaped.)

• Dude’s Rating Scale

• Standing Ovation
• Hearty Round of Applause
• Golf Clap
• “Meh” and a Shoulder Shrug
• Booed
• Lustily Booed and Pelted with Garbage

Dude here.

When I sat down to watch Frost/Nixon, I had no idea what I was in for.  Just looking at the title, I quite naturally assumed it was a film about the cryogenic freezing of Richard Nixon’s head.  I wasn’t sure how they’d squeeze two hours out of a pickled head, but I was looking forward to the journey.  Besides, Hollywood could find a way to wring two hours out of anything…even prehistoric temperature data (hello Al Gore!). 

It also crossed my mind that it could be a film about Nixon’s heretofore unknown Jekyll/Hyde split personality, surely the result of some nuclear leak happened upon during a top secret mission while serving in World War II.  It turns out it wasn’t Richard Nixon who was a hateful, vindictive bastard looking to smite anyone that looked at him sideways.  That person was actually Mr. Frost; a hulking blue madman with glowing, orange eyes that emerged whenever the temperature dropped below 40 degrees. 

At the very least, I supposed it was a rip-off of 1997’s Face/Off, where an FBI agent has his face transplanted with an ubervillain in order to infiltrate his gang and save L.A. from a mega-bomb set to blow the entire city to smithereens.  Only this time, some dirty liberal hippie captures President Nixon and transplants their faces, thereby assuming the presidency and committing all the Watergate crimes in Nixon’s image in an effort to bring down the Republican Party from the inside.  It would have worked too, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids…

So imagine my surprise when I discovered that Frost/Nixon is a movie about…talking.  I told you Hollywood could get two hours out of anything.

Frost/Nixon is a dramatization of the series of interviews and the events leading to the series of interviews between David Frost and Richard Nixon in 1977.  Frost is a television talk show host who has a playboy reputation and got an early and fleeting taste of success in America.  Nixon is a former U.S. President with a nasty disposition and a penchant for wiretapping.  After noting Nixon’s lack of contrition and guilt for his transgressions while in office, Frost follows a whim to land a tell-all interview with the President.  To nearly everyone’s astonishment, Nixon seems interested.  He sees an opportunity to restore his reputation and even possibly resurrect his political career.  He’s also extremely motivated by the promised $600,000 appearance fee.  As the interviews unfold, so does a battle of will and wits between the inexperienced Frost and manipulative Nixon.

Director Ron Howard (Apollo 13) proves what a good, experienced filmmaker can do; take a subject as seemingly mundane as an interview and make a compelling, gripping and tense film.  Of course, his job was made easier here by the incredibly good performances of both Frank Langella as Nixon (in an Oscar-nominated role) and Michael Sheen as David Frost.  Langella was terrific as Nixon the tyrant, boiling up slowly until exploding into a livid rage, but even better as a defeated Nixon, wearing loneliness and weariness and sadness on his face like a basset hound.  He so embodied Nixon that he literally had me squirming with discomfort in my chair, and when he finally growls the line “I’m saying that when the President does it, that means it’s not illegal,” it’s a jaw-dropping moment even though you knew it was coming.  Sheen was less heralded in his role as David Frost, but I thought he was tremendous as well, playing the interviewer as aloof but dedicated.  His role is obviously not as deep with potential and personality as Langella’s, but he makes Frost into a worthy foil. 

The supporting cast includes a solid turn by Kevin Bacon as Nixon confidant and ardent supporter Jack Brennan.  When things go wrong for the former President, Bacon makes sure that you can see it stings Jack just as much as Nixon.  Throw in Oliver Platt, the always reliable Sam Rockwell (The Green Mile) and an Oscar-nominated screenplay by Peter Morgan (The Queen), and it’s little wonder why Frost/Nixon was a 2009 Best Picture nominee.

In the interest of full disclosure I must confess that I know little in the way of Watergate trivia, so I cannot say with any certainty what historical liberties have been taken here.  But the film is so well done, it doesn’t matter.  Whether you’re such a Nixon historian that you know the name of his 3^rd-grade pet bird or you think Watergate is that giant flop where Kevin Costner has gills, Frost/Nixon provides enough drama and intrigue that you’ll enjoy it.

It’s one of my favorites, and it doesn’t even feature any topless women or car chases.  And I find that very unsettling.              

Email me your enemies list, conspiracy theories, praise or ridicule at dudeviews@yahoo.com.  

Until next time, the Dude is not in. 

•  Movie:  Frost/Nixon
• Genre:  Drama           
• Rating:  R
• Running Time: 122 minutes
• Dude’s Rating:  Standing Ovation

(Dude Brockhaus is a dirty liberal hippie who lives in New Haven, IN, where he’s blissfully unaware that anything ever happened before 1980.)

• Dude’s Rating Scale

• Standing Ovation
• Hearty Round of Applause
• Golf Clap
• “Meh” and a Shoulder Shrug
• Booed
• Lustily Booed and Pelted with Garbage

Dude here.

It’s been a rough few weeks for ol’ Duder, beginning with a family vacation during which my mom broke her arm, an illness that saw me put down faster than a Jew at a Don Rickles show, and a family tragedy involving my brother-in-law.  Needless to say, I haven’t felt much like writing comedy pieces lately.  Then a few days ago, in an effort to get back to some sense of life normalcy, I went back and read some of my old columns.  It wasn’t long before I realized they don’t really contain any comedy anyway, so getting back into it shouldn’t be too difficult.  So I combed through the stockpiled DVR programs that have been sitting there since September and I decided upon Appaloosa, a western featuring a litany of stars and hey-I-know-that-guys directed and co-written by Ed Harris.

Appaloosa features Harris as Virgil Cole, a gunman for hire who travels from town to town rounding up bad guys with sidekick Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen).  A quick voiceover catches us up on the history between Virgil and Everett as they ride into Appaloosa, where they have been summoned by the town council because the town marshal and his deputies have recently been gunned down by local villain Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons).  In typical Old West fashion, it takes about ten seconds before Virgil and Everett are blasting away some troublemakers in the local saloon while tossing out glib lines.  This, of course, leads to an early confrontation between Virgil and Bragg, which was one of my favorite parts of the film.  Soon after, a woman named Allison French (Renee Zellweger) arrives in town and catches the eye of Virgil.  But there may be more to Mrs. French than meets the eye – is she merely a liability for the lawmen, or is she a conniving strumpet looking for a powerful husband?  Eventually Bragg is brought in to face charges and answer for the death of the marshal and deputies, and that’s where the real action begins, complete with train hijackings, Native American skirmishes, gunfights and double crosses. 

Ed Harris is one of those guys that I’ll buy in just about any role.  He could play a 12-year-old girl scout and I’d believe in the character.  He’s good here in his most typical role as a grizzled, wise badass with little time or inclination for tomfoolery.  I also liked Viggo Mortensen’s performance, whose character here is the very definition of loyal.  The duo has a good onscreen chemistry whether playing allies or adversaries, as in 2005’s A History of Violence.  Plus, Mortensen is one of the few good Hollywood actors I can still enjoy because my wife doesn’t find him attractive…unless you’re talking Lord of the Rings, where she finds him otherworldly dreamy.  But I never watch those films anyway because they’re all wizard fights and munchkins and dorkazoidal nonsense. 

Jeremy Irons is solid as Bragg, whose character is more of a cocky weasel than a bloodthirsty gunslinger.  His early face-off with Harris is one of the best scenes of the film; intense and ominous.  I wish they’d spent a little more time on his character later in the film as there’s a plot development involving Bragg that seems rushed and unfocussed.  They certainly could have sacrificed a little screen time for Renee Zellweger’s character, easily the most grating character of the film.  Zellweger isn’t as annoying here as she can be when playing period piece women, but she was still bothersome.

 The film had me thinking about how I’d fare as an Old West character.  I certainly don’t see myself as a lawman, because I’m just not good with confrontation.  The one thing that kept me from being a cop today, besides the intense academy training that would certainly explode my heart, was that I could never envision pulling someone over and confronting their wrongdoing.  Plus, I’m incredibly lazy.  I’d never chase down a bad guy.  I mean, that’s why they give you a gun, right?  Actually, now that I think about it, maybe those things are the exact qualifications I need to be an Old West town marshal.  Because they always seem to be sitting around with their feet kicked up until they get word that there’s trouble at the General Store, at which point they grab their iron and start shooting.  Then again, I’d never have the stones to stand alone against a posse of outlaws.  And realistically, if a gunfight started I wouldn’t need a horse to be two states over by sundown.  So town marshal is out.

I don’t see myself as a gunslinging villain either.  I think I’d be more of a white collar crooked banker criminal type, if I ever had the stomach for it.  But I feel guilty and nauseous when I cheat at Monopoly.  And since I’m for gun control, it’s unlikely I’d have the means to develop into a prickly, sneering desperado itching to shoot saloon patrons at the drop of a hat.  Also, I’d never show up for the dusty street showdowns at high noon because (A) I’m late for everything and (B) I’m too much of a wuss.     

I certainly wouldn’t be a ranch hand, because I consider myself an inactivist and don’t believe in manual labor of any sort.  There was a time when I’d have been in the running for town drunk, but my drinking and horse trough bathing days are largely behind me.  I would have an interest in being the town prostitute but I don’t think I have the proper equipment, so the only thing left is bartender.  I think I could handle pouring drinks, and I’d be a pro at hiding when the fights started. 

Speaking of fights, there aren’t too many in Appaloosa.  There’s a deliberate pace to the film and it works well because the shootouts and conflicts that do occur seem more important.  But viewers expecting a butt-kicking, shoot-em-up western may be disappointed, because much of the film is focused on the relationships between Virgil, Everett and Allie French.  Stay tuned through the credits for the comedy of Ed Harris singing “You’ll Never Leave My Heart,” a song he wrote co-wrote with composer Jeff Beal.  It had my dog howling.

You can always email me your praise or ridicule at dudeviews@yahoo.com.  

Until next time, the Dude is not in. 

• Movie:  Appaloosa
• Genre:  Western
• Rating:  R
• Running Time: 115 minutes
• Dude’s Rating:  Hearty Round of Applause

(Dude Brockhaus lives in New Haven, IN, with his wife Mackenzie and three little ranch hands.)

• Dude’s Rating Scale

• Standing Ovation
• Hearty Round of Applause
• Golf Clap
• “Meh” and a Shoulder Shrug
• Booed
• Lustily Booed and Pelted with Garbage