Wyatt Earp

Given the number of filmic variants on the "Gunfight At The OK Corral" good guys vs bad guys story, whether directly as in the John Sturges 1957 film of that name or indirectly as in Howard Hawk's Rio Bravo (1959)  one would think there must be a damn good reason for yet another addition to the catalogue.

Lawrence Kasdan tries to imbue the hoary yarn with a romantically epic Heaven’s Gate-style treatment but frankly the story has been flogged to death and there is nothing here but the over-familiar generic elements – the moustachioed Earps in their long black coats, consumptive Doc Holliday spittin’ blood into his hankie, lots of card playin', whiskey drinkin’ and shootin’ including scummy bad guys incapable of hitting the side of a barn at ten paces - the whole shebang given a heavy-handed, glossily sanitized treatment that only manages to make its Polo Ralph Lauren players, Kevin Costner, Dennis Quaid and Michael Madsen especially, look faintly ridiculous as Wild West gunslingers. Quaid’s Holliday in particular is an implausible confection, endlessly droning on about his impending death (which in reality occurred  6 years after the events depicted) and comes off badly compared to Val Kilmer’s version in the equally generic but less panoramic Tombstone, released the year previously. Whilst there is still room for the definitive Wyatt Earp story, Kasdan’s film is not it.

 

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