mharrison-17627

A fun action film, nothing more than that. Kurt Russell is fine as Wyatt Earp, but Val Kilmer gives a ridiculous over the top performance as Doc Holliday. In fact Doc is a silly cartoonish character in this film - almost everything he says is witty and memorable, not how a real life person would talk. At least Dennis Quaid portrayed a believable character in "Wyatt Earp". Kilmer does not look ill in the film despite the make up, whereas Quaid deliberately lost weight for the part.

If "Wyatt Earp" had been half an hour shorter and had a better actor playing the title role it would definitely be regarded as a much greater film than "Tombstone".

Many horses were killed in the making of this terrible fictional pseudo-historical epic, and this is very evident from the battle scenes. However the ridiculous and offensive racist casting makes the film completely unwatchable today. Casting Robert Morley as the Emperor of China and James Mason - with a particularly ridiculous attempt an an accent - as his Chinese advisor makes the film seem like a pantomime instead of a semi-serious attempt at making an epic adventure.

Talking Pictures TV should stop showing this dated, racist film in the UK as it is simply not appropriate in the 21st century.

John Wayne was too obviously good from the very beginning to need any kind of reforming. If this film had been made with Robert Mitchum playing Quirt Evans it might have worked, but Wayne is just too likeable and perfect. A remake in the 1960s with Clint Eastwood as Evans would have been ideal.

Bruce Cabot, the poor man's Ward Bond, makes little impression as the heavy.

Not surprisingly John Wayne's fans were not impressed by this film, which is very long on talk and short on action.

Seeing actual colour photographs of the location filming shows how much better this film would have looked in Technicolor.

The boy was quite good and Harry Carey was fine as the old marshall, although it is quite apparent that he had lung cancer and COPD.