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DVD Wyatt Earp (Two-Disc Special Edition)
This massive, in-depth study of the dark Western icon comes off with mixed results. Trying to capture the whole life, (warts and all) of the lawman-criminal-brother-fortune hunter, director Lawrence Kasdan gains points for sheer scale, giving us a rich epic painted in dark colors with gritty settings. But the visual poetry and extensive foreshadowing ruin the dramatic drive. Some scenes have as much impact as stalker movies; you're just waiting for someone to get knocked off. As Earp, Kevin Costner is not afraid to look rumpled and play colorlessly (as in The Bodyguard), but it saps the energy of this 3-hour-plus film. The only relief is Dennis Quaid as a droll Doc Holiday, a much more engaging character. New faces Linden Ashby and Joanna Going (as an Earp brother and a lover, respectively) are solid finds, though the remainder of the female cast is barely given anything to do. Best is the first half, with Costner, as hip as he was in his Silverado days, going through a series of ups and downs until he accidentally finds his profession. Great set design (Ida Random) utilizes dozens of similar settings that always look distinctive. Recommended to fans of the star and the genre, but the story never justifies its length. --Doug Thomas
Review(s): DVD Wyatt Earp (Two-Disc Special Edition)
One of my favorite western movies of all time.
This movies is worth watching on the big screen. And I don't mean the multiplex type of big screens. This movie is really awesome on one of those older movie theatres with the extra large projection screens. The movie is simply amazing. The characters are well played and the storyline is fantastic. It's a longish movie but that's the time required to tell this story. If you have'nt seen it and like the wild west and it's history, then this is a movie definitely worth watching. Kevin Costner is excellent, probably his best movie.
Way too long.....
Not realistic.....Wyatt Earp dunking Doc's head in the water? Don't think so! And a lot of it boring. Wyatt Earp was no saint I'm sure, but his character was so obnoxious at times I was almost rooting for his enemies! Enough said. Bad western...bad movie.
Taking On Legends
I read that Kevin Costner and Lawrence Kasdan originally wanted WYATT EARP to be a two-part film, a grand, sweeping epic that covered a big chunk of the Wild West from Earp's childhood to his death in the 20th Century. But the production was scaled down when news that a rival Earp project, TOMBSTONE, was also in production.
(Bob "Boze" Bell, the editor of True West magazine, has several excellent books on Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday worth checking out).
The big question when TOMBSTONE came out first, then WYATT EARP was: Which one do you like better?
Well, I love the story enough to like them both.
TOMBSTONE is more of the crowd-pleasing Western where the Good Guys vs. the Bad Guys.
But WYATT EARP tries to dig a little deeper, aim closer to the human side of the history and legend (and how they intersect). Wyatt didn't show up in Tombstone wearing a white cowboy hat and a shiny badge--and he certainly didn't leave that way. Of all the movies of the gunfight at the OK Corral, WYATT EARP comes the closest to depicting the 38-second gunfight than all the others (just go to the Cochise County courthouse in Tombstone and check out the second-by-second depictions on the walls).
And Dennis Quaid was ROBBED at award time that year. His Doc Holliday was amazing. He looked, as Holliday was described, "dead from the eyes down." Since I've always heard that the cameras add five pounds to everyone, Quaid must have looked like a ghostly apparition during the shoot. And I've heard that a doctor was on the set every day for him.
As far as I'm concerned, he's right up there with DeNiro in RAGING BULL as far as how far an actor will go to play a part.
I've also read in these reviews complaints about Costner's performance--something I didn't have a problem with.
After reading several Earp biographies and other books about the West and Tombstone, Costner plays him with the type of stoic remoteness that most of those accounts record. Testimony about the OK Corral gunfight cite that Wyatt was "cool as cucumber" as he drew his gun and took careful aim before firing.
I also really loved the music in this film.
And I'm not the only one: for years I've heard it used in trailers for other films (along with the BRAVEHEART soundtrack), and I bought the soundtrack on CD. Good stuff.
I would've loved to have seen what they really wanted to do with this film.
But I'll take it as it is.
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