Consistently excellent

Rating: Null/10 (2 August 2003)

Tombstone is a thrill ride with feeling, a good enough script, inspiring music and one of the best casts ever assembled in motion pictures. Kurt Russell plays the sensitive Wyatt Earp. Val Kilmer is the movie's life force with a snitty peformance as the homicidal Doc Holliday. The rest of the cast is New York Yankees deep, with even the bit roles manned by people like Billy Zane, Thomas Haden Church, Michael Rooker and Jason Priestley. Sam Elliott is great in everything that I've seen him in and his gruffness helps steady the movie until the end resolution. Dana Delaney plays the free spirit. The villains are loaded with Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn and Stephen Lang. Even Moses, himself, Charleton Heston makes a cameo. The script is relatively wide open, which is a no-brainer with the talent onhand. What the script has is a nice sense of timing, set up and pacing. The music is dynamic and is really moving, especially in times of trouble. The movie is also pretty historically accurate in many places and doesn't mutilate the concept too badly overall. This story is truly so much larger then normal life that other fascinating tidbits were left out (such as the true story of Earp's card game with Behan when he won the Oriental Saloon.) Earp is the movie's crusader, Holliday and Ringo play the cosmic dance. Watch this movie for it's passion.