dedeboucher The life of Wyatt earp i love this movie is my favortie movie

DeuceWild_77 Released just 1 year after the similar "Tombstone", "Wyatt Earp" was the Kevin Costner's response to Kevin Jarre's script, focused more on the central character of Wyatt since his upbringing, instead of the side characters that bring nothing to the film.Teaming again with Lawrence Kasdan after "The Big Chill" ('83) and the way popular "Silverado" ('85), that helped to resurrect the western genre in modern times, Kevin Costner, this time also as a producer and taking the lead role of the intrepid Wyatt Earp, both deliver an insightful semibiographical western film about the life of the legendary lawman since he was a boy in his family farm in Missouri to his later days in the Gold Rush in Alaska.With "Silverado" and his personal tryumph, "Dances with Wolves" in his resume, Costner moves comfortably in the western genre and provides a good performance as the stubborn and ruthless Wyatt Earp, giving him the needed humanity as a man who lost the love of his life and became cold and emotionless, only believing in kinship and that the law should prevail in the wild west, until he mets Josie Marcus, a daring actress and falls in love again.The movie is overlong and in the first hour the pace moves like a snail, but like an old american epic it takes time to establish the character(s) for telling their story(ies), even if some scenes were cut out to shorten the movie for another half a hour, creating then some loose ends for certain subplots and side characters, but at least was less disjointed than "Tombstone" in that matter.The production values are all splendid invocating the Old West, especially the beautiful cinematography by Owen Roizman, nominated for an Academy Award and the orchestration by James Newton Howard which reminds a lot of Bruce Broughton's score in "Silverado".The cast is good, but not as great as the rival "Tombstone", featuring besides Costner, Dennis Quaid who stole the movie as the lunger Doc Holliday, Wyatt's best friend and right hand, the actor is almost unrecognizable skinny playing the character and provides a memorable haunting performance that deserved to be Oscar nominated (he was even better than the amazing Kilmer's rendition of Doc); Gene Hackman in an extended cameo as the patriarch Earp; Michael Madsen, David Andrews, Linden Ashby & Jim Caviezel (in an earlier role) playing respectively, Virgil, James, Morgan & Warren Earp with Catherine O'Hara, JoBeth Williams (re-teaming with Kasdan after "The Big Chill") & Alison Elliott playing their wives with Annabeth Gish, Mare Winningham & Joanna Going portraying the three wifes of the long life of Wyatt Earp.The villains are less showy here than "Tombstone" and barely got decent screentime with the exception of Jeff Fahey (re-teaming with Kasdan after "Silverado") as Ike Clanton and Lewis Smith as Curly Bill Brocius. Strangely, the Johnny Ringo character way prominent in "Tombstone" as played greatly by Michael Biehn is only mentioned in the third act and was played by a stuntman.Mark Harmon as the sleazy Sheriff Johnny Behan; Tom Sizemore and Bill Pullman as the brothers Masterson, Wyatt's lawmen and Isabella Rossellini in the tiny role of Big Nose Kate, Doc Holliday's mistress complete the main cast.In short, "Wyatt Earp" flopped hard when it was released and was bashed by critics because of its length, slow pace and too much focus on Costner's character, with "Tombstone" being the critics and fans' favorite, but besides its all-star cast, fast pacing and shoot'em up / action oriented, the Cosmatos / Russell effort is inferior to this Kasdan / Costner re-teaming of "Wyatt Earp" that needs to be rediscovered by fans of an all american period piece epic film, produced and directed in the old style of the Western tradition...

felicity_gr I'm writing here starting with a clean slate: I watched the film without knowing who Wyatt Earp was, or that there was another film (Tombstone) about the same guy, which everyone has been comparing Wyatt Earp to. So, I'm not prejudiced and I'm not gonna make comparisons. It was just a boring film, with a nonsensical script that dragged on and on unnecessarily, occasionally introduced new characters who didn't have any meaningful contribution to the plot, and little to no sense of adventure and excitement. But the most annoying thing in the movie, I have to admit, is Kevin Costner himself. It seems that Mr Costner has a knack for playing the same character in every movie he stars in: a brooding, smile-less, miserable, cold-outside- but-with-a-heart-of- gold tough macho guy. Well, not such a good guy here, in my opinion. Just a cold-hearted bastard, as one of the characters calls him. But I digress. So, if the film wasn't unbearable enough, Costner's performance makes it even worse. Towards the end I had to fast- forward; I didn't miss anything important, and you wouldn't either, believe you me.

bh_tafe3 It's a well known cliché of Hollywood that they tend to release things in twos. Remember Deep Impact and Armageddon hitting at about the same time? How about Volcano and Dante's Peak? Red Planet and Mission to Mars (OK, no one remembers that one). Well in 1994 there were two films made looking at the life of famous lawman Wyatt Earp. The first, George P Cosmatos' Tombstone, looked only at Earp's time spent in the city of the title, focusing on the events leading up to and following the Showdown at the OK Corral. This film, a labour of love from Lawrence Kasdan, fashions Earp's life into an epic story of love and the binds of family in a lawless land.There is much to admire about the first half of the film, the part of me that is still a young boy who grew up watching John Wayne westerns with his father loves the shots of a herd of wild Buffalo, row after row of corn fields, cowboys riding on horseback through parched desert, and saloon shootouts all happening to a suitably grandiose soundtrack. This part of the film is pure western film making. It's nice to see Earp (Kevin Costner) interact with his father (Gene Hackman), see him go from a young law student who "never killed anyone" to a widower horse thief on the lam who bumps into the Masterson brothers, Ed (Bill Pullman) and Bat (Tom Sizemore) while hunting Buffalo. We see him work as a card dealer for his brother James (David Andrews) and then unwittingly become a lawman after taking down a gun toting drunk. It's kind of cool to meet his other brothers Morgan (Linden Ashby) and Virgil (Michael Madsen), but around now, we are starting to get weighed down by too many characters. I'm still on board as we see Earp get banished from Dodge City and becomes a bounty hunter, meeting Doc Holliday (Dennis Quaid-very good) and then returning to Dodge City with his brothers to clean it up after the Sheriff is killed.And this is really where you should turn it off and watch Cosmatos's film. In the second half, Kasdan gets bogged down trying to maneuver around far too many characters, which is further exacerbated by placing Earp into a love triangle that takes up far too much time and focus, just as the movie is headed towards the climactic showdown at the OK Corral. Following said showdown, things continue to go fairly slowly, we get yet more time donated to Earp's love life while there are far more interesting things going on. From there it's a slog to the finish line, where we get a great flashback scene of Earp talking down a lynch mob. These are the scenes we want to see, not a girl drinking herself to death because her common law husband is sleeping with a prettier woman. Cosmatos was able to convey this without using up as much screen time.It's a shame the film get bogged down in its second half because Costner, Quaid, Sizemore, Hackman, Cinematographer Owen Roizman, and Composer James Newton Howard are all up for this and in fine form. Ultimately though, the film suffers from having too many characters, too much of a bland ,love triangle and being in the shadow of the more action oriented Tombstone, which took a more economical look at the same events. For its first half however, Wyatt Earp is both gorgeous to look at and an entertaining origin story of one of the most heavily mythologized figures of the American Wild West. Costner gives us an Earp that, if not capturing what the actual man was like, captures what he should have been like, while Quaid is not as memorable as Kilmer, but still excellent as Holliday.Wyatt Earp is something of a missed opportunity due to a weak second half, but is far from worthless. Helpfully on the DVD release I own, the first disc ends right when Earp cleans up Dodge City. For viewers this is a pretty good time to take it out and watch Cosmatos' Tombstone instead of disc 2. As a matter of fact, I may do that right now...