TOMBSTONE (1993) **1/2 They don't even bother with opening credits, there's a brief black & white stock footage explanatory segment trying to link the wild west with the mafia then about 900 people immediately get shot. The main problem with such histrionics is that it dwarfs the true legends. The gunfight at the OK Corral is dull by comparison, a couple guys with mustaches and long coats shooting some even more poorly shaven guys who must have got to wardrobe after all the good stuff was taken. I am stunned to relate that Val Kilmer is very good as Doc Holliday-the greatest gunman in the west dying of (mass alcohol) consumption. Granted he gets all the good lines but the casting would seem almost as doomed as, say Val as Jim Morrison or something. Instead they over-amp him full of vampire eyeliner and he never seems quite as drunk as he might be, but he does fall over a lot and get across the sense of a major league southern gentleman. Kurt Russell has it easier, but does nearly as well, as the less textured Wyatt Earp who, along with his brothers, comprises the Earp brothers. Michael Biehn provides a wet pasta Johnny Ringo (but is pivotal in the best bar scene in the film), making it look a lot easier to tame the west than it must have been; and there's something wrong when none of the ladies turn in a memorable performance in a cast including a Laudenum addict (more vampire eyeliner), several ladies of shifting fortune, and...well, mainly ladies of shifting fortune I guess. This probably isn't what you want to plagiarize for your term paper, but it's an entertaining cowboy movie.
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