Half good, half rotten

Rating: Null/10 (12 January 2007)

The first half of this movie is well-researched and well-written, with the most realistic depiction of Doc Holliday ever filmed. And some of the performances, particularly those of Val Kilmer and Powers Boothe, are outstanding. But after the Gunfight at the OK Corral, the movie goes off a dramatic cliff. Earp's vengeance ride lasted only three weeks, and only a few people were killed; in this movie, it implies Wyatt's vengeance stretched on for months. The movie becomes ludicrously overstated with scenes as hammy as in any 1930s's B Western, such as Wyatt staggering through a lighting-laced thunderstorm, his brother's blood on his hands, moaning "Morgan!" Or his silly, uncharacteristic question to Doc late in the film about what makes a man like Johnny Ringo do the bad things he does. A great opportunity for a movie that could have been both historically accurate and entertaining as a film was badly blown, beginning well but destroying itself the longer it goes on.