Disappointing Remake

Rating: 4/10 (21 August 2010)

This is a pretty well told and entertaining retelling of the Wyatt Earp story. I gave it only four stars in my IMDb ranking. It bombed in my ranking system, with only eight points out of a maximum of 24 points. That's well below the average ranking of 12.
Here's what I liked:

The story is well told. There are no plot holes. It moves quickly and is entertaining.

Val Kilmer did a great job playing Doc Holiday. I'm still partial to Victor Mature's rendition in "My Darling Clementine", but I can understand why some think Kilmer's is the best ever.

I just love Sam Elliot in Westerns. If he had been in his prime in the 40's or 50's I think he could have been one of the all time best leading men in the genre (the same could be said for Tommy Lee Jones).

This ends up being a real good buddy movie. The Earp/Holiday relationship in the older films is more "frenemy" than buddy. I really cared about these two guys at the end and their loyalty to each other was touching.

Unfortunately there were a whole bunch of things in this movie that chapped my grits:

I didn't feel film gave us any compelling reason for retelling a story that has be told in a number of very good films already.

I like Kurt Russell. Loved him in "Overboard". Wyatt Earp? No way. Didn't buy it. I'll give him credit for one thing though: he got the most he could get out of Kurt Russell for this. Also, he was very effective in the scene where he threw Billy Bob Thornton out of the bar.

They had too many heavies, none of which were characterized well enough. And what did they do to poor Ike Clanton? He was a blatant coward and the butt of what little humor there was in the movie. Walter Brennan must have rolled over in his grave.

The many female parts all felt gratuitous. There's only one interesting woman in this story and that's Doc Holiday's girlfriend. She gets very little screen time due to the cast of thousands. And did I miss something or did she just disappear from the story without explanation?

Besides some sarcastic remarks by Kilmer, there was no comic relief.

Very weak attempts to move the story out of the gnarly little town set into some interesting landscapes.

The body count was unnecessarily high.

And what's with the blatant reuse of the Book of Revelations "rider on a pale horse" sruff. Didn't Russell see "Pale Rider"?

There's a brief appearance by Mexican characters in the opening sequence, then the remainder of the film is 100% Anglo, which is odd for an area that is so heavily populated by Mexicans.

And as is typical in almost every post Vietnam Western, they punt on the Indian issue. To introduce an Indian character opens up a can of worms i.e. due to PC concerns, an Indian can't be shown doing anything bad anymore, so you have to make room in the story for a maudlin "aren't white people bad" theme. That in turn doesn't always help sell tickets to white people. Easier and more profitable to punt and pretend they weren't there.