This Is A Good'un

Rating: 9/10 (25 July 2005)

Oh, yeah. Really hard not to really like this film. Brotherhood, courage, duty, loyalty, love, and humor. What's amazing is that with all the hefty boy girl and brother stuff going on, the deepest, most moving part of the film is the love between Wyatt and Doc. As a matter of fact, even Wyatt's seeking the love of his life seems just to be the legitimate expression of his love for Doc. Val Kilmer's Doc is Bob Dylan finally showing up in the Old West -- ironic, laconic, fragile, and lovable...and just too cool for words. What satisfies in this film is that everyone in this film is over the top macho, in the most positive sense of the word. The cowboys are macho-ly bad guys, the brothers are macho-ly brothers, the wives are macho-ly wives, the actress is macho-ly woman, the coward is macho-ly cowardly, and the suggested gay actor is macho-ly suggestedly gay. Yes, and Doc is macho-ly a scholarly, poetic, out-of place and time, sensitive artist of a killer. The film is just too entertaining to care about what it actually means, or where it all ends up.