Terrible acting on her part, really detracted from what was otherwise a pretty good movie.
shareShe did a fine job. But you have to pay attention. It's her character who is so false in the beginning, not her acting. By the end of the film she is holding her own with three terrific actors.
shareI agree, but IMO she does that to every movie she's in.
If hate were people, I'd be China! -Phil Berquist
I agree that she was poorly cast.
Interstingly, Diane Lane was the first choice, but dropped out.
Such a pity Diane didn't feature - I think she would have been so much more convincing as a "calculating" female character. Probably would have made Allie a "stronger" woman as well, whereas Renée gives off a 'dependent lapdog' kind of vibe. Well I think Renée did her best and I can think of worse casting choices, but I agree 100%, the bottom line is that Renée was miscast. Appaloosa as a whole suffered for it.
shareIt's pretty sad when the homely waitress in the restaurant is hotter than the leading actress.
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I never understood the appeal of Renee Zellwegger. She is always squinting and has her face puckered up. Every movie she looks like Clint Eastwood in drag sucking on a lemon. I love Diane Lane, she would have been perfect for this. I hope they make two sequels (there are two additional Everette and Virgil novels) but they should recast Allie.
shareAgreed she sorta ruined it for me with her wooden acting and looks wise,I have never been a fan of her.Diane Lane or Michelle Pfeiffer or Naomi Watts would have done justice to the role in my opinion.
Who on Earth could that be ?
totally agree - Renee is weird. Only her Bridget Jones movies worked.
share[deleted]
I agree, ncron, as do some others who have been commenting here from the beginning. It seems to be so hard for some people to understand that actors -- even female actors () -- will sometimes risk the negative character who isn't a charming bitch or bastard. RZ held her own quite well with three terrific actors.
shareI suppose if the bartender was "hotter" than Ed Harris you wouldn't feel the need to mention it.
share"Probably would have made Allie a "stronger" woman as well, whereas Renée gives off a 'dependent lapdog' kind of vibe."
Which would have been a total misread of the character adding in something that wasn't there.
Allie wasn't a 'strong' woman, hence her sleeping with whoever was the 'stallion of the heard'. She was weak. a 'dependent lapdog'.
But despite that failing (a severe and critical one, mind you), Virgil Cole still found something about her that he loved; some chemical attraction that he would be in denial to not admit. That's his dilemma.
I LIKED the fact that this movie was grown-up enough to cast alot of people that weren't good looking and had characters that weren't the greatest people could be but instead were flawed.
Virgil is the 'good guy' that LOSES it in the bar and beats up a guy because he's angry at Allie.
Everett is the 'good guy' that provokes a gunfight with Bragg so that he can murder him.....for Virgil, not because Bragg 'deserves' it.
Allie is the romantic lead....that isn't faithful, but rather weak of self ("I'm scared of everything.").
You are making some very good points which had me re-thinking the movie, and I can't fault your reading of the characters' intentions as such. However, I just never felt Renée-the-actress was very convincing in her role, whichever way she meant to portray Allie. She could have been the best casting choice amongst the list of available actresses for all I know, and as I said, I'm sure she gave it her best shot to "become" Allie. The general consensus though appear to be that she was simply miscast and I agree with that. And if physical attractiveness was something the filmmakers tried to downplay, then I'd have liked to see what the Julianne Moores and Patricia Clarksons would have made with the material. I know though that in reality casting is not always such a straightforward process.
sharespielberto,
I totally agree. Not to mention that the "miscast" RZ managed to hold her own with three very fine actors. I think she looked quite realistic, and she put some depth into her role that a lot of people seemed to miss because they didn't like the way she looked and sounded. I don't much like her looks, either, but I respect the job she did here. And if you didn't like to look at her, you could always watch the guys working their roles to perfection.
Agree. Think Rene Z. was perfect in this roll.
SHe wasn't supposed to be drop dead gorgeous or a "strong" woman.
But she was "clean." That line cracked me up. Clean probably was very appealing (and unusual) in the old west.
"When Ed Harris' character kept commenting on how good looking she was, I could help but scoff on the inside."
You forget her competition. This was the 1890's on the frontier. The only good-looking woman in the film works out of the saloon, in an entrepeneurial position (so to speak).
I thought it was a lot more realistic than the female leads in most westerns, who look so improbable and so modern. And of course RZ can act, which so many of them could not.
Then I'd be interested to know why Lane dropped out. In the extras RZ said she jumped at the chance to work with Harris so it may be that she didn't study the script from a dramaturgical point of view.
A few SPOILERS follow:
I don't think you can patch up this movie by using alternative actresses. Can anyone here truthfully say they were riveted by the love-interest thread? I observed it with detachment, from afar, and was pretty uninterested in the outcome. The brief hijacking chapter - the only one where the Allie and Bragg stories overlapped - was disorienting: the guys who sprang Bragg from the train caved in immediately and then he was back in jail and we were slouching into another chapter, the one where we are told, rather than shown, that he is legally untouchable. The storyline is what helped the film fail, not the female lead.
"The storyline is what helped the film fail"
Except that it didn't, either critically or financially. It made a profit -- bigger than EH expected, in fact -- and was on several critics' lists of the best films of the year.
It may have failed for you, but not by any other criteria.
Agreed. I can't stand Renee in anything. That terrible high pitched nasal voice-- that baggy ol' cewpie doll face, the lack of interesting acting choices.
But even despite the presence of Renee I like this movie-it's the only Western I've ever watched start to finish. It doesn't hurt Appaloosa that Viggo is so well cast, and IMO he basically carries the movie single-handedly.
Wherever Aragorn, I'm a go'rn
Yeah, Viggo makes an amazing "cowboy" type.
shareThis is the one major role in the movie poorly written. Renee is not my favorite by any means, but it's really not a very well developed character on the page and she shouldn't have taken it. This character had absolutely no redeeming qualities. They could have at least made her funny or given her something to work with other than what she got. The reason the movie worked was the relationship between Viggo and Ed.
share"Ruined" is a bit harsh. She definitely dragged it down from what it could have been, but it was still a solid film in spite of her lack of talent.
"The great act of faith is when a man decides he is not God."
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Could not agree more! But by the end of the movie I was thinking maybe they cast Zellweger in particular because nobody likes her! Unsympathetic character. Boy, it would have been so much better with Diane Lane. And I am def a new Viggo fan. Like Butch and Sundance.
shareShe was great in Cold Mountain.
But she did suck bad in this one.