Energy; pot boiling; characterisation and ultimately heart sapped out of a film of its time, but Tombstone suffices as a basic, action orientated flick.

Rating: 6/10 (11 March 2010)

George P. Cosmatos' loose 1993 remake of John Ford's Classical Hollywood era western My Darling Clementine is a relatively daft and wavy film; a piece that announces its intentions very early on with a big shoot out after some bandits inflict a large amount of cruelty on a bunch of townsfolk, whereas the original built to a climactic shootout in which characters we'd spent the entire film with rode on in and put themselves in the face of danger. Tombstone feels the need to establish, in the most basic of manners, that the 'bad guys' are the ones cackling and free willingly executing whilst a bunch of gunshots sound off for the sake of it. Tombstone veers more towards actioner than it does western, providing basic arcs for its characters and hand-holding us through whom we ought to be rooting for; but what else can you expect from the director of the second Rambo film?
There's that wonderful instance in Ford's version of the story which sees a character by name of Doc Holliday, who has spent most of the opening forty minutes giving Henry Fonda's Wyatt Earp grief, have the Clementine of the title walk back into his life and put him through an emotional grinder of forlorn memories and drink. The shift in balance was stark, an informing to the audience that just because a character gives grief to someone we might assume to be whatever protagonist the film has lined up, does not mean he cannot be a human being; with respective flaws and characteristics. Tombstone tiptoes around this naturalistic air of plight, opting for archetype more often than I'd have liked whilst spending a gross amount of time plodding along before breaking off into bouts of shooting and chaos at intermittent times.
The Wyatt Earp of Tombstone is played by Kurt Russell, an ex-marshal whom we know is good natured at the core due to stopping of a number of horses from having further pain and harm inflicted upon them by a certain perpetrator; an entire sequence which stands in stark comparison to the opening bandits and their attitudes towards the innocent. Journeying to the Arizona town of Tombstone with his brothers, where they hope to settle down, Earp is mangled into defending the town from the aforementioned group of a group of bullyin', gun-totin' cowboys; led by Curly Bill Brocius (Boothe). Doc Holliday is this time played by Val Kilmer, a laid-back; black-clad; smooth talking' card player whom we observe beat the system, win a card game, engage in a bar-room brawl of some nature before swinging his way outta' there with the money in one hand and the gal in the other – yes, it does feel a little fabricated. Holliday's relationship with Earp is certainly more low key in this one, something that fast-tracks character relations between the two and forces the film to focus on the cowboy gang as a primary source of antagonism, something that doesn't crop up nearly as much as Earp and Holliday's banter in Ford's version; hence the reason Tombstone comes across as the plodding piece it is.
Italian born Cosmatos has his lead reflect what might very well be his own view on the material, in the sense Russell's Earp has an opinion on all the death and what's going on around him but it's a vacant feeling. A character's attempt at raising theological discussion with Russell's Earp near the beginning of the film is somewhat dismissed; amidst all the killing and hurt, it's established he doesn't care much about it – it's more so how Earp 'does' it rather than how he 'feels' about it, something that echoes the director's approach to the subject matter, in the sense he is more interested in black and white heroes and villains than looking at what these people think about those around them and particular predicaments. Holliday's easy truce with Earp is representational of this.
Earp doesn't initially want the responsibility of keeping law and order. His smart and well dressed brothers stand in articulate contrast to Boothe's ragtag bunch of sloppy, roughly dressed and ugly looking bandits; although the film implores, in a bizarre manner, that practically everybody in the town is bound by a theatrical performance of a Shakespere piece; and that when the poetic nature of something so beautiful begins, everybody keeps quiet and observes. The film is one in which the focus is on men, and their relationship with one another and how they come to exist within the enclosed space of the town of Tombstone; a place that two different factions see two different, distinct futures in which they are at the respective centrefold of it all. In a film about men, men co-existing; men sorting out their relations with one another, it ought to be no surprise that the female characters are pushed to the back row - relegated to staying at home; staying silent and being seen out and about beside their man.
Regardless, Tombstone isn't a bad film but it's certainly a lot less interesting than films that have taken on the story of Earp in the past. As an actioner, it works relatively well but as a character piece, it limps along for over two hours purely so that it can boil down to a showdown between good and evil. The melodramatic thunderclaps complete with lightning in the background as a key character dies about half way through exemplifies this, in the sense Cosmatos needs aid within the dramatic thunderclap sound effects to bring about more emotion out of the occurrence, rather than rely on all the previous character driven content for it to genuinely play out effectively. I like a good film about a power struggle in one locale between two groups of men, each with their own ideologies and attitudes towards life and Tombstone does suffice, it's just a little drawn-out; limp and mysteriously uninvolving for most of the time.