Tombstone

 1.5/4

Starring: Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Sam Elliott, Bill Paxton, Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, Dana Delaney, Jon Tenney, Stephen Lang, Jason Priestley, Thomas Haden Church, Joanna Pacula, Charlton Heston

Rated R for Strong Western Violence

"Tombstone" is a throwback to the Westerns of yesteryear, the kind that made John Wayne famous.  It has all the requisite elements: saloons, whiskey, gambling, corsets, horses.  And of course those six shooters and fantabulous mustaches.  Unfortunately, more is needed than cosmetic successes to craft a compelling Western, and director George P. Cosmatos doesn't find it.  It's amazing how scattered this movie truly is and how frequently it drips with artifice.

Hero gunslinger Wyatt Earp (Russell) has had enough of his crime fighting days.  He intends to retire anonymously in the town of Tombstone and start a business with his brothers, Virgil (Elliott) and Morgan (Paxton), and friend Doc Holliday (Kilmer).  The fact that Tombstone is all but governed by a gang of thugs and sociopaths called the Cowboys means nothing to him.  He is no longer a lawman and intends to keep it that way.  But the Cowboys, led by a pair of psychos named Curly Bill Brocious (Boothe) and Johnny Ringo (Biehn), are so violent that Wyatt and his companions can no longer ignore them.

The problem with "Tombstone" is easy to identify: it tries to do too much.  There are too many characters for them to gain any traction.  Even Wyatt himself remains a stick figure for the entire film.  Russell does what he can, but he is at the mercy of an underwritten and poorly focused screenplay and a director of limited talents.  The color is provided by the supporting characters, especially Kilmer, whose portrayal of Doc Holliday is deliciously droll.  Powers Boothe (looking and acting very much like Tim Curry) and Michael Biehn do fine jobs playing the dastardly villains, but they are just not given the latitude to develop the people they play.

"Tombstone" did not have a happy production history, and that doesn't surprise me.  Filming appears to be rushed, many scenes feel staged and fake, and subplots are raised and dropped with alarming frequency.  Consider the obligatory crying at fate scene.  Not only does it feature some awful acting by Kurt Russell, you can practically hear the director's off screen direction.  And this is not the only scene that rings to false.  The subplot involving a tentative romance between Wyatt and a traveling actress named Josephine (Delaney) should have been excised.  Delaney is solid but the actors have zip chemistry, and their scenes together damage the film's already uncertain flow.

One respite is that some of the action scenes are nicely staged.  Some, but not all.  They're nothing special but they raise the film's energy level a bit and give us a break from the hooey of a plot.  "Tombstone" is assuredly violent, but at the same time there are scenes that seem to criticize violence.  Perhaps Cosmatos was trying to have his cake and eat it too, but the film is too lightweight for anything substantial to be addressed and the tonal disconnect is obvious.

Ultimately, this is another one of those movies where everything is thrown at the screen in the hopes that something will work.  Too little does, and it's a shame that no one stopped the film from stumbling out of the gate before it wheezes to the finish line completely battered and bruised.  This is a movie that lacked a consistent vision and the film suffers for it.