MOVIE DETAILS
Rating: 6.7 out of 10
Director: Lawrence Kasdan
Writer: Dan Gordon, Lawrence Kasdan
Star: Kevin Costner, Dennis Quaid, Gene Hackman
Genres: Action/Adventure/Biography/Drama/Western
Release Date: June 24, 1994 (United States)
“Wyatt Earp” feels like “Tombstone” with air in it. Same characters, many of the same stories, not much of the tension and drama. It’s a sprawling, messy biography of Wyatt Earp (Kevin Costner), starting when he’s a kid and following his development from an awkward would-be lawyer into a slick gunslinger, which is a long journey in a film that needs better pacing over three hours.
It’s clear that the movie means to be serious. It doesn’t want to be just another retelling of the gunfight at OK Corral. Its subject is the whole lifespan of Wyatt Earp, but unfortunately the movie doesn’t make much out of the parts we don’t already know about. Earp lived for a long time (he died in 1929 48 years after the famous gunfight in Tombstone) but his moment of fame was brief and we are no more interested in Wyatt Earp as an old man than King Lear as a young one.
The screenplay, written by Dan Gordon in collaboration with director Lawrence Kasdan, employs the time-honored biopic method of establishing a few shorthand themes and repeating them again and again. Young Wyatt gets nightly lectures at the dinner table from his father (Gene Hackman) about blood bonds: “Family comes first!” He takes this lesson so deeply to heart that it explains in this version anyway much of his motivation at OK Corral and afterwards.
As a young man, Earp resembles old Jimmy Stewart characters; bashful but single-minded, he turns down offers of fast women in saloons because he intends to marry a girl back home (Annabeth Gish), he comes courting with flowers, they’re married and living happily ever after until she dies tragically, and then it seems as if he vows never to trust his emotions with any non-family member ever again.
The movie follows Earp’s progress through the West, his employment as a stagecoach driver and a Wells Fargo man, his stints as lawman in Dodge City and Tombstone. Curiously, because the script places such emphasis on family, his brothers do not emerge very vividly; even strong actor Michael Madsen, as Virgil Earp, has so little dialogue and screen time that he doesn’t emerge as truly individual; the brothers James and Morgan are even less visible, although the wives or mistresses of the three Earp brothers make more of an impression if only because they spend so much time arguing with Wyatt’s notions of family honor and duty.
In the Earp saga, Doc Holiday is the character that is always in the front. He is a gambler and dentist who joins forces with the Earps and lends his gun to their fights when he’s dying from tuberculosis and has nothing left to lose. Dennis Quaid gives a great performance as this character; 38 pounds were shed by him during preparation for this role where he also grew out his mustache so people hardly recognize him while watching it. However, Tombstone released just one month prior to this film which was more intense and had clearer narrative structures than any other movie in its genre at that time period so unfortunately all performances including Quaid’s suffer because of comparisons made against them based on December ‘93s’ intensity levels alone (Ibid). His acting may be dryly humorous but there is no wit or detached sublimity such as what you would find coming out from Val Kilmer’s portrayal of Doc Holliday in the earlier film ’Tombstone’. Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp had more self confidence and a better defined personality than Kevin Costner did playing his part here.
If characters remain fuzzy even though they have plenty time on screen then storytelling needs some tightening up too.
For example: In an early scene after Wyatt loses his wife he gets drunk steals horses gets himself arrested put into jail until dad shows up (Hackman) bails him out again this time because supposedly it saved Wyatts life since hanging was probably would’ve been next thing but wait isn’t jail supposed located somewhere Arkansas they may say state name only once still California somehow pops Hackmans mind before coming back east coast real trains don’t run across country like that during those days without using railroads).
Later near end of movie there could be much improvement made if certain parts were taken out entirely like when brothers bring dead sibling home via train ride right behind them someone lets know enemies might attack somewhere along tracks so while sitting still station past midnight good guys bad guys start shooting hiding running around train cars yes otherwise too complicated you won’t even figure it out who’s making progress toward whose direction winning what (if anything) anymore. Also there is no point in telling back stories instead of telling what happened afterward like how Wyatt Earp dealt with an angry mob or something.
But the biggest problem with this film isn’t so much about its characters or their actions but rather what it doesn’t know about itself as a movie. Who was Wyatt Earp? A hero, maybe? Or did he start off being civilized until he became one killing person after another? Was he just really good at being law enforcement officer? Or was he more interested in starting fights than stopping them altogether on other occasions too?. All four of these ideas are voted for by ‘Wyatt earp’ however none seem to be focused upon throughout entire runtime thus far. There is also way too many love interests shown here while none matter except for Josie perhaps because she doesn’t ask much from him at all which changes when Josie enters picture with her beauty and independence showing us that there can always come along someone else
The prostitute tries to kill herself a few times; Josie tries to go along with it, but then there is the scene where Earp has to deal with death and two screaming women and violence all at once, and that’s just too much. We don’t understand Costner’s character because his confusion about his liaisons is not written clearly enough: are they only sexual? Then why does he keep letting them continue masochistically? Is it unfair of me to compare “Tombstone” and “Wyatt Earp” since they’ve been released within six months of each other? Maybe. But “Wyatt Earp” certainly has more grandiosity than any other movie I can think of offhand in this genre. “Tombstone,” on the other hand, was very straightforward about what it wanted to do and how it was going to get there; it forced my hand. It’s brave though slow with a large canvas yet not very compelling.
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