Wyatt Earp

Lawrence Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp (1994) had the misfortune of being released almost simultaneous to Tombstone (1993), an energetic, fast-paced and fun Western that appealed even to non-genre fans. Kasdan’s morose, somber revisionist epic suffered in comparison, and tanked at the box-office. Sixteen years later, it’s mostly been forgotten.

Kasdan’s previous Western, Silverado (1985), was a cornball, fun but disposable throwback to classic Western clichés. Wyatt Earp is the complete opposite: a film determined to cut one of the Old West’s greatest heroes down to size. It’s an uneven film, with some great moments mixed with rubbish, and dragged down by excessive length and a garbled message.

Wyatt Earp (Kevin Costner) is a Missouri farm boy who is lectured by his father (Gene Hackman) that family is the most important thing in life. Earp’s attempts to start a life are ruined when his wife (Annabeth Gish) dies, and Earp drifts from law school into a life of petty crime. Bailed out by his father, Wyatt goes west to seek his fortune, becoming a lawman in Kansas cattle towns like Wichita and Dodge City. He eventually teams up with brothers Virgil (Michael Madsen), Morgan (Linden Ashby) and Warren (James Caviezel), along with Ed (Bill Pullman) and Bat Masterson (Tom Sizemore) and tubercular gunslinger Doc Holiday (Dennis Quaid), to civilize Dodge, then takes the show to mining town Tombstone, Arizona, hoping to settle down as businessmen. The Earps soon find themselves drawn into a conflict with the Cowboys, a local gang of thugs led by Curly Bill Brocious (Lewis Smith) and abetted by crooked Sheriff Behan (Mark Harmon), and the consequences are deadly.

Wyatt Earp is a mostly good film that undeniably suffers from excessive length and bloat. The opening scenes of Earp’s misspent youth go on far too long, and seem patched together from any number of John Ford films. Once the main plot gets going, the movie picks up and remains mostly good. Its gritty, unsentimental view of the West is perfectly in-keeping with our post-modern zeitgeist, where there’s little room for white-hatted heroes and noble myths. Wyatt Earp has a feeling of authenticity, but is really no more historically accurate than other Earp films; if anything, Tombstone is more accurate for all its Hollywood flash.

Though it’s not the first revisionist take on the Earp legend, Wyatt Earp gets points for the balanced portrait of its subject. Hollywood’s righteous heroes smiting the evil Clantons are replaced with a gang of opportunists who will do anything for money: James (David Andrews) pimps out his own wife, and all of the brothers are involved in vice rackets. Wyatt is a deeply conflicted man, with a sense of justice and family honor, but also a streak of violence and melancholy – and overwhelming stubbornness. Some of the best scenes involve Wyatt’s clashes with his brothers’ wives; they strongly resent Earp’s control over their husbands. Earp treats his own wife Mattie (Mare Winningham) like dirt and has a none-too-subtle fling with actress Josie Marcus (Joanne Going). After Morgan is killed and Virgil wounded by back-stabbing Cowboys, all notions of justice go out the window: Wyatt, Holliday and friends ride out for revenge, and this time it’s personal.

The movie’s weakest segment, oddly enough, comes in Tombstone, the cornerstone of any Earp movie. The film somehow manages to get everything wrong, whether historically or dramatically. The Cowboys are an interchangeable bunch of prairie scum, a far cry from Tombstone’s colorful cast of baddies. The worst sin, of course, is the frightfully dull staging of the gunfight at the OK Corral, easily the weakest portrayal of that infamous shootout. One might excuse this, since it's not Kasdan's primary focus as in most other Earp films, but the movie begins with the set-up to the gunfight, positing it as the film's pivotal event. Thus, the shootout's lackluster staging can only be a colossal let-down.

The saving grace of these scenes is the love triangle between Wyatt, Josie and Sheriff Behan, much more convincingly portrayed than in Tombstone; it's an unglamorous mess, fuelled by lust and jealousy, that enhances Wyatt and Behan's political feud. Kasdan also a does a creditable job of showing the tangled, dubious legal situation in Arizona Territory – both Earp and Behan are duly appointed peace officers with overlapping jurisdictions, and Wyatt finds himself, in Doc’s words, “a lawman and an outlaw – best of both worlds.”

In later sections Kasdan undercuts the revisionism, particularly in the mythic showdown with Curly Bill Brocious, and a silly epilogue echoing The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’s famous intonation: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” This might be okay if the rest of the film hadn’t been devoted to tearing down that legend. Perhaps the sentimentalist in Kasdan couldn’t resist sounding a positive note amidst the gloom, but it comes off poorly in context. After three-plus hours of depicting Earp as a morally dubious scum bag, these bits seem false.

Kasdan’s direction is excellent throughout. The film bristles with period detail, and there is a lot of gorgeous cinematography courtesy of Owen Roizman. James Newton Howard provides a beautiful, sweeping score that contributes wonderfully to the film. Technically, there isn’t much at fault with the movie.

Kevin Costner gets a lot of flak for his performance, but he does a fine job portraying the moral ambiguities and bullheadedness of Kasdan’s Earp. Dennis Quaid gives an excellent turn as Doc Holliday. He’s a world removed from Val Kilmer’s flamboyantly fun performance, convincingly tubercular, complemented by a delightfully black, vulgar sense of humor.

The huge supporting cast is poorly used. The best are Tom Sizemore and Bill Pullman as Bat and Ed Masterson, Mark Harmon’s slimy Sheriff Behan, and Joanna Going, a far better Josie than Dana Delaney’s anachronistic “modern woman.” The Earp wives are also well-played by Catherine O’Hara, JoBeth Williams, Mare Winnigham, Alison Elliot and Annabeth Gish (Nixon).

The rest aren’t so lucky. Gene Hackman gets third billing for a glorified cameo. Isabella Rossellini is well-cast as Big Nose Kate, but has only a pair of brief scenes. Linden Ashby and Michael Madsen are one-note as Morgan and Virgil. Jeff Fahey, Lewis Smith and Adam Baldwin come off terribly compared to their Tombstone equivalents.

Wyatt Earp is worth seeing for Western buffs, Costner fans and Earp afficionados. But as good as it often is, it can’t hold a candle to My Darling Clementine or Tombstone for entertainment value.