Tombstone

Wyatt Earp is back. Just accept it – you can’t have the return of the Western without the self-made legend of Wyatt Earp thundering back onto the screen. Tombstone is just the beginning. Kevin Costner’s Wyatt Earp arrives next summer. So gitty up, hombre. The marshal’s back in town.

Tombstone is one of the more schizophrenic film versions made of Wyatt and the Earp’s brothers’ exploits. On some levels, it’s the most accurate retelling of their story. But in other ways, Tombstone manages to launch so many rockets through the roof of credibility that it makes some of the older fantasy movies about the Earps look like documentaries.

Kurt Russell delivers a flat performance as a moody Wyatt who moves to the newly formed boom town of Tombstone. Being something of a family man, he brings with him two of his brothers and the wives of all three men. Lucky thing he has his brothers, too. Virgil (Sam Elliott) handles the flick’s early action, while Morgan (Bill Paxton) does all of the emoting for the clan. Along for the ride is Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday. He gets to deliver the one-liners. Since everyone else takes care of the acting, Russell presumably has lots of time to wax his moustache.

Wyatt views Tombstone as a place to make a quick fortune since he feels that he did his bit for law and order back in Dodge City. But there’s an army of bad guys (who resemble a cross between the Wild Bunch and the Crips) threatening Tombstone, so, like good Republicans, the Earp boys strap on some leg iron and tin badges and start kicking butt. Before the movie’s even half over, they’re trooping off to their infamous appointment at the O.K. Corral.

As Tombstone correctly presents, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral was only one in a long list of battles the boys fought. The real Wyatt’s motives for participating in the shoot-out were, at best, debatable. Some historians see Wyatt as one of the greatest lawmen who ever lived. Others view him as self-serving bullmeister whose greatest claim to fame was that he outlived virtually all of his peers – friend and foe alike (Wyatt died in Los Angeles in 1929). Tombstone strides firmly down the middle path between these perspectives and tries to have it both ways. Maybe that’s why Russell’s performance is so negligible – he really didn’t know what his character’s motivation was.

But if Russell needed to pump up his volume, the rest of the cast could have toned theirs down. Powers Booth does a hammy impersonation of Lee Marvin, while Stephen Lang plays Ilk Clanton as a nasty variation on Gabby Hayes. Dana Delaney, like the rest of the women in Tombstone, is marginal to this men’s only club. Only Kilmer stands out in this sage-brush saga of pasted-on facial hair. He’s not even that good, but he plays Holliday as such a sassy bitch that the whole movie nearly threatens to veer into some truly twisted camp masterpiece.

And, once again, Charlton Heston collects a good paycheck for two minutes worth of work. I want his agent.