User Reviews

"Law and Order" (1932), a film starring Walter Huston and Harry Carey, had blazed the Earp screen trail with a brave version of the 0. K. Corral happenings, although the true-life characters were never named… "Frontier Marshal" (1939) starring Randolph Scott and "Wichita" (1955) with Joel McCrea also told the story…

To most modern cinema-goers, however, the Corral incident and the confused events and motivations which led to it have been best served by four films, John Ford's "My Darling Clementine" (1946), John Sturges' "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," (1957), Sturges' "Hour of the Gun" (1967), and George P. Cosmatos' "Tombstone" (1993). But the question has yet to be solved: should the American West be depicted on the screen as it actually was, or should it continue to be a form of mythology?

Hollywood's version of history is considerably at variance with the facts, and life on the frontier in the 19th century would appear to have been more dull and monotonous than exciting and colorful… Certainly, life in Tombstone, Arizona, in its time of greatest prosperity as a mining town must have been anything but healthy, with its vast number of rough working men relieving their boredom with drinking and brawling, and occasionally shooting each other…

In Kasdan's epic Western, Earp is the upright defender of the law, and Doc, a dissolute gambler… Nevertheless, the men are compassionate and respectful, and both have a kind of dignity… Holliday is much more credible as the black sheep of an aristocratic Virginia family and a jaded idealist… Dennis Quaid allowed himself to lose 30 pounds of his weight only to accurately portray the gun-notorious Doc Holliday, now, alas devoted to the bottle and in the latter stages of tuberculosis…

In this instance we have Quaid breathing fire and fury at the slightest hint of an insult before breathing more heavily into his handkerchief… He's a multi-dimensional human being who provides most of the film's best moments… His character has his own form of ability… Quaid does a far better work of portraying the effects of Holliday's tuberculosis… Kilmer, in "Tombstone," never seems to have anything worse than a bad flu, except when it's dramatically necessary for him to look bad in greater degree…

Earp (Kevin Costner) finds Doc sincere but nevertheless strikes up an understanding which one feels will blossom into grudging joint gun-action should the need arise… The need is obviously there in villainous Clantons and McLaurys… The path is well and truly pointed to that rendezvous at the Corral…

Kasdan's motion picture covers areas of Earp's life that George P. Cosmatos' film "Tombstone" does not even touch… While "Tombstone" was an action picture, centering on the events leading up to and including the famous gunfight, Lawrence Kasdan's "Wyatt Earp" focused on the man himself and his life from childhood to the confrontation and beyond…The film starts with the teenage Earp and progresses through old age…

The action in Kasdan's film is firm and fresh, nicely photographed and the story well told… But we always remember Ford's "My Darling Clementine" for its other qualities—for the unhurried lulls and the 'time off' taken on the way… This is Ford indulging himself, as was his habit, but on this occasion the indulgences all come off and are imparted with magic…

"My Daring Clementine" was a film of touches—Fonda, seated, adjusting his boots and his balance while the world, such as it is, goes by; Fonda, the peacemaker, right-and-properly in church; Fonda, with an old-world frontier concept of courtesy leading his lady in the out of doors dance…

Earp in Kasdan's biopic is an ordinary man who met and married a beautiful young woman who died of typhoid a short time after the marriage… Profoundly bitter about her death, he goes from a drunken fellow to horse thief to buffalo hunter to stagecoach driver to Dodge City, Kansas where he became one of the most famous "Westerners" of all time...

The great critical and commercial success of "Dances with Wolves" and "Unforgiven" in the early nineties led many, myself included, to hope that a great revival of the cinematic Western might be on the way. Although those hopes have largely been disappointed, the genre is in better health now than it was in the eighties and there have been a number of good examples. "Wyatt Earp" is one of them.

Earp has been the hero of several Westerns, and those that I have seen (I have not seen either John Sturges's "Hour of the Gun" or the more recent "Tombstone") have concentrated either on events in Tombstone ("My Darling Clementine", "Gunfight at the OK Corral") or on those in Dodge City ("Dodge City" itself, which offered a fictionalised version of the Earp story). "Wyatt Earp", however, is an attempt at a filmed biography which gives us its hero's entire life story, starting with his boyhood in Illinois. Most of the first hour or so is taken up with Earp's life before he became a lawman; the famous gunfight, about two-thirds of the way through the film's three hours, only takes up about a couple of minutes of the action.

The advantage of showing us the hero's early life is that this allows us to understand many of the facets of his character. Perhaps the most important incident in the film is the tragically early death of his young first wife Urilla; Earp's grief at her death turns him from a quiet, studious young man with an ambition to become a lawyer into a lawless desperado. Facing a death-sentence in Arkansas for horse-stealing (evidently still a capital crime in America in the 1870s, long after it had ceased to be one in Britain), Earp is rescued by his father's intervention and flees to the West as a fugitive from justice. His later career as a lawman is interpreted as an effort to make amends for this youthful foray into lawlessness. Another aspect of his character brought out in these early scenes is the importance to him of family ties. He and his brothers Morgan and Virgil later make a formidable team, with stronger emotional ties to one another than to the women in their lives.

In an earlier age, Earp would probably have been portrayed as a clean-cut hero, the brave man in the white hat cleaning up the wild frontier, but in the revisionist nineties such an approach seemed too simplistic and the film offers us something closer to a "warts and all" portrayal. Apart from the horse-stealing incident, Earp is sacked from his job as Sheriff of Dodge City because his methods of law enforcement seem excessively harsh even by Wild West standards, and much of the film is taken up with details of his loveless sexual relationship with the prostitute Mattie Blaylock. There is, however, a limit to the film's revisionism. As with many biopics, the film-makers have selected episodes from their subject's life in order to form a coherent narrative to illustrate a particular viewpoint. In this case the narrative seems to be that of a wild young man who matures into a legendary hero of the West, and any historical details which do not fit in are ignored. For example, the film does not explore the suggestion made by some historians that the Gunfight had less to do with law enforcement than with a feud between the Earp family and their Clanton rivals over control of Tombstone's businesses. On the other hand, the film is sometimes harder on Earp than the historical record might warrant. In reality, there is considerable doubt about whether he was actually guilty of horse-stealing; in the film his guilt is quite apparent.

"Wyatt Earp"'s main weakness is its great length. It is clearly aiming to repeat the success of Kevin Costner's other epic Western of the nineties, "Dances with Wolves", but does not have that film's staying power, and at times can seem too slow-moving. Costner's acting is not quite as compelling as in the earlier film, but he is still very watchable, and this is one of his better films, much better than, say, "The Bodyguard" or the embarrassingly bad "Waterworld". There is a good cameo from Gene Hackman as Earp's father, but the best contribution is probably from Dennis Quaid as the tubercular Doc Holliday, spitting out defiance of the world in his Southern drawl in between his bouts of coughing.

Despite its occasional longueurs, in its latter stages (which deal with the post-Gunfight spiral of revenge between the Earp and Clanton gangs, with Wyatt's happy second marriage to the beautiful Josie and with his final promotion to legendary status) the film achieves a similar epic grandeur to that of "Dances with Wolves", aided by those familiar features of the large-scale Western, sweeping photography of the scenery and a stirring musical score. One of the better modern Westerns. 7/10

I just viewed this movie on the History Channel and the commercials were somewhat better than the movie. I couldn't wait for the breaks, but I kept on watching it anyway. That should tell you something. Perhaps I am a glutton for punishment.

You cannot rate this film as great, but it is rather interesting and intriguing. Rather than calling it an historical adult western, I would attach to it the description of dark, drawn-out,"Dancing with Wolves" type of Western. I will not say, as others have, that the film is boring. It can only be boring if you haven't had enough sleep. The film has much going for it, i.e., good acting (esp. Dennis Quaid as Doc Holiday), action, excellent photography, and philosophical dialog...probably too much of the latter.

The one memorable moment, that I can recall, is when young Wyatt (with his companion riding "shotgun", is driving a wagon at break-neck speed, trying to outrun a band of outlaws. As in real life, it is almost impossible to shoot a man off a galloping horse from a moving wagon, unless you happen to be an Annie Oakley. Wyatt, shouts to his companion something to the effect, "For crying out loud, shoot the lead horse. You can shoot a horse, can't you!" He does shoot the horse, and the chase abruptly ends. Think of all those old movies where the wagon or stage coach goes over the cliff when all you had to do was shoot the outlaws' horses...easy targets.

At any rate, all that was going through my mind during this entire movie was the the theme song from the 1950's Wyatt Earp TV series starring Hugh Obrien:

Wyatt Earp, Wyatt Earp,

Brave courageous and bold...

Long live his name and long live his glory

And long may his story be told.

Marvin Cohn

First of all, I would like to know why so many people are comparing Wyatt Earp to Tombstone. Yes...both films were made within a year apart, but their objectives are completely different. The titles pretty much say it. Tombstone is about the events that transpired in Tombstone...Wyatt Earp is about the man Wyatt Earp. Therefore, they do not have the same goal in mind and are telling two very different stories. I enjoyed both films for different reasons and allow them to stand on their own merits. Tombstone was more entertaining and action-packed, however, the story was not as historically accurate and the characters were a little over the top. Whereas Wyatt Earp had more of a personal, in-depth examination of the life, but not the legend, of Wyatt Earp.

Now, lets get to the intention of this film. Wyatt Earp is suppose to be a story about the lawman, with the convictions and tribulations that shape him as a young boy up to old age. Unlike, Tombstone, which focuses on an array of characters with the plot leading up to a single event, quite historically incorrect, I might add. Yes...Wyatt Earp is cold, unforgiving, bitter, reserved, etc. However, he was not always that way, as his early life traveling with his family to California and marriage to Urella Sutherland, a woman he deeply loved, demonstrates. The turning point in the story is when Wyatt's beloved wife dies along with their unborn child. Wyatt lashes out and loses all reason to live. He becomes extremely self-destructive and sets about roaming the West with no real purpose at all except to die. His father slaps some sense into him and tells him to move on with his life. Eventually, he becomes a lawman and that is when we meet the mysterious and quiet Wyatt Earp that nobody likes. So...okay...Wyatt becomes reserved, quiet, and cruel, but it is not as if we do not know why. He was a man trying to survive in a harsh, brutal land and being a lawman did not make it any easier because he was always a target. He was plagued by external demons as well as internal demons, such as the bottle and a strong yearning, undying love for his dead wife. He was very human and this movie manifests that. Tombstone is fine for those of you that do not care for Wyatt Earp beyond the infamous fight at the OK Carroll or the lawman legend. However, if you can stand a more accurate, in depth character exploration of Wyatt Earp, without any pretensions, than this is a movie worth seeing.