Wyatt Earp (1994)

Directed by Lawrence Kasdan. Starring Kevin Costner, Dennis Quaid, Linden Ashby, Michael Madsen, Joanna Going, Bill Pullman, Tom Sizemore, Mare Winningham, Jeff Fahey, David Andrews, Gene Hackman, Mark Harmon, Annabeth Gish, Catherine O’Hara, JoBeth Williams, Isabella Rossellini, Randle Mell, Lewis Smith, Jim Caviezel, Alison Elliott, Ian Bohen, Téa Leoni. [PG-13]

Epic biography of the famous Western lawman, played here as a cold, hardened man by Costner, tracing his life as a youngster full of piss and vinegar all the way to the aftermath of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral when he sought vengeance against those who attacked his brothers. Widely panned upon release (a box office flop that racked up a handful of Razzie nominations), it seems to be a victim of colossally bad timing, getting released a mere six months after the more conventional and commercial Tombstone; it does suffer from being too ambitious in the breadth of the story it wants to tell (though never slow or dull, it is quite long), but it’s also a matter of what it’s trying to tell. One would expect the freshest episodes to be the ones that occur long before Earp ever came to Dodge City or Tombstone—when Wyatt was a wagon driver, a boxing referee, a buffalo hunter, etc., and married to a long-time sweetheart (Gish) who was struck down by typhoid—but there’s too little point of view or depth in these exploits, and it’s only upon the entrance of tubercular Doc Holliday (Quaid) that things start getting interesting…even though these events have already been told repeatedly (and, again, recently). No faulting the production values or the performances, but the story never fully strings together, and too many characters come and go so quickly that they’re forgotten; although the roles are filled by well-known actors, Wyatt’s father (Hackman) and Holliday’s traveling companion, “Big Nose” Kate (Rossellini), each exit the picture without fanfare after appearing in just a few scenes each. Same as it was with Tombstone, the final stretch of cleaning up “loose ends” is a murky slog that strains for some measure of mythic grandeur, but Wyatt Earp himself was probably a better promoter on that front than any of these filmmakers. James Newton Howard provides the majestic score. Costner also co-produced alongside director Kasdan and Jim Wilson.

65/100