Tombstone
(1993)
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Based on the actual events that led to the showdown at O.K. Corral, this is an exciting and old-fashioned western populated by colorful, hard-living heroes and ruthless, black-hatted outlaws. |
Right from its dazzling opening — Robert Mitchum narrating over silent western, black-and-white footage, accompanied by Bruce Broughton's expectant score, before the screen explodes into colour — this take on the Wyatt Earp legend never shifts out of top gear. While the darker aspects of Earp's character are fleshed out in the modern manner, and while flesh itself is ripped apart by the buzzing bullets at the OK Corral, this is very much a traditional western (well, post-spaghetti and post-Peckinpah) and far preferable to the rather self-important and overlong Kevin Costner version, Wyatt Earp, released later the same year. Kurt Russell makes a satisfyingly equivocal hero and Val Kilmer has a field day in the showier role as the consumptive Doc Holliday. Cameo appearances by Charlton Heston and Harry Carey Jr add to the general feeling of a saddleworn genre being paid the most viscerally thrilling and generous of tributes. The film was sharply scripted by Kevin Jarre, who was abruptly sacked as director and replaced by George Pan Cosmatos, a man of no reputation who suddenly came up smelling of roses.
Halliwell's Film Guide
Vigorous retelling of the incidents that led up to the famous gunfight at the OK Corral, celebrating Earp as the archetypal Western hero.