WYATT EARP
A film review by Chuck Dowling
Copyright 1996 Chuck Dowling
Wyatt Earp (1994) ****1/2 - C:Kevin Costner, Dennis Quaid, Gene Hackman, Michael Madsen, Tom Sizemore, Jeff Fahey, Mark Harmon, Bill Pullman, Isabella Rossellini, Jo Beth Williams, Mare Winningham, Mackenzie Astin, Tea Leoni.
"Wyatt Earp" faced unfortunate comparisons to the Kurt Russell film "Tombstone" which came out only months earlier. And while both are immensely entertaining, they are in fact two distinctly different kinds of films. "Tombstone" is an action picture, centering around the events which took place in the town of Tombstone involving Wyatt Earp. "Wyatt Earp" is a drama about the man himself, about what made him who he was, and about the events throughout his entire life. People who expect lots of action from this film will be disappointed, but I knew exactly what I was about to see and therefore my expectations were met.
"Wyatt Earp" runs over three hours long, something which audiences today just won't stand for, no matter if the film is good or not (which makes no sense, especially when people will rent three movies and then watch them back to back). For me, as long as a movie is good, then it can go on forever. "Wyatt Earp" in no way seems too long.
Surely almost every movie-goer by now has seen some version of the Wyatt Earp legend, or at least knows it's story. So there's not much need to discuss the plot of the film. Wyatt Earp and his family try to lead normal lives, but get drawn into the business of keeping the peace and can not escape that profession.
Now, I have seen many film versions of this story: "My Darling Clementine", "Gunfight at the OK Corral", "Hour of the Gun", and "Tombstone". And I still must say that I'm confused as to the actual events leading up to and following the big gunfight between the Earps and the Clantons. None of the film versions have successfully gone into enough detail to explain matters. I guess that the filmmakers assume that we already know the background info and therefore don't need to give much exposition into the conflict.
Kevin Costner, who in my opinion has received a lot of unnecessary criticism in the last few years, does a fine job with the title character. He convincingly plays Wyatt from his teenage years up until old age. Dennis Quaid, who pulled a Robert De Niro losing over 30 pounds to play the sickly Doc Holliday, gives a fantastic performance. The same goes for the rest of the cast, all doing just fine with what they are given to do. The direction, cinematography, and set design are all excellent, as is James Newton Howard's eloquent score music.
A minor problem with the film is that the script tries to cover way too much ground, and even at its long running time you feel as though the filmmakers have barely scratched the surface. Also, characters seem to wander in and out of the story with no explaination as to where they are. Other characters, such as Mark Harmon's, aren't even introduced to us, we just have to figure out who he is as we go along! And, the final two scenes seem unsatisfactory. You want to see Wyatt return to his father and resolve their conflict. You want to see Wyatt take Doc to the hospital and to say goodbye to his friend. But, I guess if movies always went exactly where we wanted them to, then the whole movie "experience" would lose it's effect.
A special expanded edition of "Wyatt Earp" was released on video which included more that twenty minutes of footage which had been cut from the original theatrical version. All of the scenes re-added are worthy scenes, adding more depth to characters, and giving more infomation about who certain people are, such as Mark Harmon's character and Isabella Rossellini's character. The expanded edition gets *****.
-- Chuck Dowling Visit Chuck's Movie Reviews at http://users.southeast.net/~chuckd21/ Over 1,500 movies rated and/or reviewed! Movie news, box office reports, film related links, and reader's polls and reviews.
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