Tombstone

The movie captures the spirit of the Old West really well—dusty towns, tension between lawmen and outlaws, loyalty between brothers, and themes of honor and revenge.

I had expectations after reading comment after comment about enjoyment of this film and about its "historicity". However, I was appalled at it from the very beginning. I tried to stick it out but finally had to bow out after I somehow managed to get to 103 minutes. Looks like less than one percent gave it the minimum rating of one star, so I suppose that then gives me something to think about regarding human differences. Maybe if I had read where even just one person wrote something about a Hollywood treatment with its typical dramatization, costuming, and storyline, I might have passed on it. I recognize that many people like extreme melodrama, fancy gun twirling, very over-done shoot'em up and down gunfights, guns that don't run out of bullets, and much larger than life good-guy heroes and their extreme opposite, and the romance that gets tossed in, but I do not. And for something historical I prefer something somehow somewhat believable. And maybe even something somewhat original but that is certainly not the case with Tombstone. I recognize that most people enjoy films like this one, and I write these comments for the benefit of those who know what I mean by a terrible Hollywoodization and perhaps spare them a possibly excruciating experience.

The film starts out promisingly enough but then shoots itself in both feet by robbing its villains of any kind of threat and wrapping an affected romantic plot around its already emaciated waist. The romantic subplot is silly and carried off in a lighthearted manner reminiscent of corny '80s TV serials, but the worst thing is the villains. Though Earp does deliver some wrath upon their heads by the movie's end, we've already seen them act in too casual a manner, to the point where any threat they may have had is gone. Now it's just a bunch of guys shooting each other with no emotional kick for the viewer to really make him put his fist in the air and say, "You get that son of a B!" Mainstream types will gush all over this, which is what it was made for. But if you like your Westerns down and dirty, with real stakes at hand and real villains about to get theirs, stay away from this popcorn crap.