Almost - not quite

Rating: Null/10 (9 March 2000)

Spoilers!
A Val Kilmer showcase - though to be fair Holliday was an interesting character; doomed with incurable tb, out west (or Puerto Rico for awhile?) trying to live as a doomed man, always a step ahead of the law or actually escaping arrest, violent, crooked, mean, but a friend of the Earps.
I think the Russell portrayal of Wyatt was fair enough, and reading Wyatt's accounts and testimonies, it's probably how Earp saw himself. Might have been nice to tie in the Wells Fargo angle, particularly as they went to the trouble to have an office in the town for the movie.
The gang was broadly portrayed, too, though you never saw them rob a stage, just generally cut up in town. You never saw the HQ ranches - making them the 'first gang', the 'cowboys', etc. And the owners of the Clanton Ranch, today, have their own take on things, suggested in the film, as well.
And the fight seems fairly described, with some of the gang unarmed, and Doc doing most of the shooting. Why they were waiting in the alley still seems something for speculation, considering it may have been just across the street from the window of Doc's hotel room. But, basically, this and the set up and Wyatt heading the posse later, is pretty much fact.
What's missing is the feel of that period in the old west. The costumes are too flowery, the lighting is not Arizona or NM, the buildings look both too clean and too modern, save maybe for the Grand Hotel, and so on. And of course, the Dana Delaney 'love interest' seems tossed in, though it is important to the film's plot.
And worse, the feel of the situation itself isn't developed. What about the friendships and animosities? It seems as if the background had to occur only in town, that old friends could only get together in town, that the threats and fights - in town. But these guys, good and bad, got around. And not everything happened - in town - unless I guess one wanted to shoot a Hollywood movie pretending its Tombstone.
It seemed at times more an outline for movie than a movie, more an attempt to try and stay with the historical fact while superficially blending in Hollywood cliches, rather than just telling the story of the feud, of that 'gang family', true to the beliefs of the day, the expectations of that time, and even the look and feel of Tombstone and outlying ranches.
The movie seemed more cut/view, buy it/reshoot, and so on, than a smooth telling of the story of the Earps and the Clanton gang.