Less Grand, but Tauter and Leaner

Rating: 7/10 (21 March 2014)

In the cinema, as in other areas of life, one occasionally comes across odd coincidences. There were, for example, two unrelated films about the life of Oscar Wilde in 1960 and two biopics of Coco Chanel in 2008/09. In the early seventies two Hollywood studios were working on disaster movies about skyscrapers on fire, but in this case the coincidence was discovered early on and the two studios joined forces to produce the film known as "The Towering Inferno".
The near-simultaneous appearance of two films about the life of Wyatt Earp and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1993/94 might seem like a similar coincidence, but in fact there is a more logical explanation. Kevin Costner, the star of "Wyatt Earp", and Kevin Jarre, the scriptwriter of "Tombstone", originally planned to make a movie together on this theme, doubtless inspired by the success of Costner's own "Dances with Wolves" and Eastwood's "The Unforgiven", which gave promise that a revival of the Western was possible in the nineties. After a disagreement, however, they went their separate ways to make their own separate films.
"Wyatt Earp", the film which Costner was to make with director Lawrence Kasdan, is a grand, sprawling three-hour epic, and Jarre, who was originally also the director of "Tombstone", had ambitions to produce something in the same vein. The studio, however, were worried by the potential cost of the project and wanted something shorter. Jarre was sacked as director when shooting fell behind schedule, George P. Cosmatos was brought in to replace him and extensive cuts were made to his script.
As the title suggests, the film is (like "Wyatt Earp") based on real historical events in, Tombstone, Arizona during the 1880s, although it takes some liberties with strict historical fact. Wyatt Earp has recently retired as a peace officer and moves to Tombstone with his brothers Virgil and Morgan, seeing it as a place where he can settle down and pursue his business interests. Of course, he quickly realises that Tombstone is just as wild and lawless as the towns, such as Dodge City, in which he made his reputation and that his services will be required against a band of outlaws called the Cowboys who are terrorising the town.
I think that Costner is better than Kurt Russell (here virtually unrecognisable behind that huge moustache) as Wyatt Earp; Russell never quite brings Costner's power and sense of the heroic to the role. "Tombstone" does, however, have one outstanding acting contribution which comes, rather surprisingly, from Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday. I say "surprisingly" because, before seeing this film, I had always regarded Kilmer as a well-muscled action hero rather than as a serious actor. Holliday was (as the film points out) a complex character, a Southern gentleman-turned-dentist-turned gambler-cum-gunslinger and, unlike many of Kilmer's characters, was not physically strong- indeed, he was seriously ill with tuberculosis at the time of the events depicted here and did not have long to live. Kilmer's characterisation brings out many of the complexities of his character; his Doc is simultaneously gentlemanly, effete, soft-spoken, ruthless and shrewd. The driving force behind him is his close friendship with Wyatt Earp; he is not a man with many friends, but is unquestioningly loyal to the few that he does have. Among the supporting cast I liked Sam Elliott as Virgil and Dana Delany as Wyatt's mistress (later his second wife) Josephine Marcus.
Kilmer, strangely, was not Jarre's first choice to play Doc. That would have been Willem Dafoe, but in a curious piece of censorship the studio, Buena Vista, refused to distribute the film if he was cast because of his role in the controversial "The Last Temptation of Christ" which had appeared several years earlier.
Cosmatos only directed a handful of films during his career, and the only ones I had previously seen were "Escape to Athena" (which I disliked) and "The Cassandra Crossing" and "Rambo" (both of which I disliked intensely). I was therefore pleasantly surprised by "Tombstone", a far better movie than any of those. The pace does sometimes flag during the second half, a legacy of the decision not to make the Gunfight the climax of the film (as is done in some versions of the story) but to go on to tell the subsequent history of the Earp brothers and their enemies. Overall, however, Cosmatos succeeds well in the difficult task of taking over somebody else's project and then, at the behest of the studio, turning it into something quite different from what was originally envisaged. His version is less grand than Kasdan's, but tauter and leaner, and can stand comparison with it. 7/10