Gritty Western and a love story to boot

Rating: 7/10 (10 May 2008)

Kurt Russell gives the performance of his career as Wyatt Earp in 1993's TOMBSTONE, a fairly accurate rendition of the Earp brothers adventures in a booming mining town. It's Virgil, Morgan and Wyatt versus a loose-knit gang of thugs known as The Cowboys for control of Tombstone. Things heat up after a showdown adjacent to the OK Corral, and Wyatt -- now a federal marshal -- creates a special posse including Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer in top form) and a trio of Cowboy deserters to hunt down the remaining Cowboys. Many familiar faces dot the landscape, including Sam Elliott as Virgil Earp, Powers Boothe as Curly Bill, leader of The Cowboys, and Michael Biehn as Johnny Ringo, second-in-command of The Cowboys. Russell is given two women to romance in this film, Earp's drug-addicted wife Mattie (Dana Nicholson) and saloon singer Josephine Marcus (Danas Delaney) who has her sights set on Wyatt. A big production with a genuine feel for the mythical cowboy era, although the truth is more likely that the Earps and Holliday were as ruthless a gang as The Cowboys. The only concession to modern times is the Maybelline-style makeup on all the ladies and the contemporary use of the English language.