Plot: What’s it about?
Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell) is a tough-as-nails cowboy, and with his wife and two brothers, is trying to settle down and try his hand at business. The rootin’ tootin’ wild West is a rough place, with tumble-weed and gun-slingers around every corner, and these guys are forced to take the law into their own hands. A band of whiskey swillin’ bad-dudes show up, and rape, pillage, and plunder the town, and Wyatt rounds up a group of do-gooders (kinda) to help him, including Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer). These duster-wearing cow-pokes go one-on-one with the bad ones, and the results are some swell shoot-outs, and a few corpses in the road. It all comes down to the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral, so to speak, and who will be left standing when the dust settles and the gun-smoke clears?
This is a classic Western, and many believe it to be the best Western of all time, and it’s easy to see why. The realism level is very high, the movie leaves out the sugar-coated sections some Westerns use, and sticks with the grim and brutal aspects. The movie is extremely dark, sometimes pitch black, and with even the good guys clad in black, the scenes sometimes seem to be total darkness, and that lends a really pessimisitic tone to the film. It is very cohesive to the film to have this darker tone, because this movie shoots for a grittier, Hollywood-less Old West. It makes the viewer realize that yeah, gun-fights and stuff seem cool, but really, how glamorous os being shot in the street?
Aside from hard-core genre fans, this movie should entice a view or two from others based on it’s cast alone, which is a fanstastic supporting cast backing up Rusell, Kilmer, and Michael Biehn. High-lighting the supporting cast are Powers Boothe, Dana Delany, Sam Elliot, Charlton Heston, Billy Zane, Jason Priestly (giggle), and Bill Paxton. A hell of a back-up if you ask me, with Heston and Elliot as must-haves for a movie like this, in my opinion. Again, this movie is not one to show your little kids on a rainy day to get them playing cowboys and Indians by any means. It is a much darker look at the days of saloons and legal hookers, maybe not what you want your kids to think of when they think of Old West “heroes” like Earp and Holliday. But, if you want to watch a dead-on Western, which is highly regarded as one of the best, then you’ll want to hitch the horses, and stay awhile in Tombstone.
Video: How does it look?
This is iffy, as the darkness needs much more clarity and crispness, but the normal outdoor or well-light shots are pretty decent. The darker scenes are the main focus of the film, so I have to mark down this one considerably.
Audio: How does it sound?
(by Matt) [Editor’s note: that’s me.] The 2.0 Dolby Digital soundtrack serves it’s purpose. I can only imagine how good this would sound with a remastered 5.1 Soundtrack. Even so, it’s not, the front speakers are used mainly for all the action, and occasionaly the surrounds (in mono, as is with Dolby Surround) are used for an added depth. Again, I stress, remaster the sound. If they can remaster “My Fair Lady” and “The Great Escape” which are thirty years older than this, they can certainly remaster this title (only 5 years old). I guess the question is…do they want to, obviously not.
Supplements: What are the extras?
Yeah right. Trailers. Bye bye high rating on this one. But, the movie is good enough to warrant a purchase, even as bare-bones as it is.
