Star Turns--What You Should Know About The Current And Upcoming Projects Of Your Favorite Players

By Guy Flatley

I

JEREMY IRONS

APPALOOSA

Viggo Mortensen, Ed Harris, Renee Zellweger, Jeremy Irons, Lance Henriksen (Directed by Ed Harris; Written by Ed Harris and Robert Knott; New Line Cinema)

Good-buddy lawmen Everett Hitch and Virgil Cole (Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris) are hired by the frightened citizens of Appaloosa to bring down Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons), the rich and thoroughly rotten rancher responsible for the murders of this Old West town’s marshal and his deputy, as well as numerous other atrocities. And, in their spare time, Everett and Vergil flirt with and try to make sense of Allie French (Renee Zellweger), an emancipated woman who seems to have a problem telling the good guys from the bad guys. (Yes, the lady knows rancher Bragg, especially in the biblical sense.)

It’s especially good to see Jeremy Irons, who’s been concentrating recently on TV and stage projects, back on the big screen, sinking his teeth into the role of the systematically vicious rancher. Young moviegoers would be well advised to check out Netflix for Irons’ gallery of classic performances in “The French Lieutenant’s Woman,” “The Mission,”  “Dead Ringers,” “Betrayal,” “Damage” and “Reversal of Fortune,”  for which Irons’ chilling portrait of the notorious Claus von Bulow brought  him an Oscar as the Best Actor of 1990.

Who says they don’t make good Westerns anymore?  Now Playing