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 - This Sleeper Took Me By SurpriseWhen my family came home with this video I wasn't too impressed. The reviews I had read were mediocre and I'm not the greatest fan of westerns anyway. But I was wrong. The Doc Holliday character reminded me of a close friend I once had. I found myself sympathizing with the characters. It kept my interest and as soon as the film was over I began researching the life of Wyatt Earp to learn new things I didn't know. I gave this video 5 stars for two reasons. The first 4 stars were because I liked the film. The 5th star was because it caused me to learn something new that will stay with me. Any 3 hour film that will leave me with permanent new knowledge is worth 5 stars. Rating:  - Okay movie...but...Wyatt Earp is an okay movie...but Quaid's performance as Doc Holliday is laughable and has put me off not only this movie but all Dennis Q's movies forever! Oh, and I have to mention-How long is this movie?! If you'd like to see a real movie about Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday-See Tombstone! Rating: - I'll Take This Version Over The RestThis is one of the best, and underrated, westerns ever made. It was a very intense, interesting character study of a famous lawman, showing flaws and all. In fact, this is the only version, I believe, that really shows the sadistic side of Wyatt Earp, and what made him a bitter man. To be fair, it also shows his good traits. It also has a terrific, deep cast and features a good mix of drama, romance and action. Even the music grows on you after several viewings. There is no humor in here: this is a serious story. Unlike the more popular "Tombstone," this Earp story has a lot less profanity and almost no usage of the Lord's name in vain....but there is rough language and some crude sexual remarks, so don't watch it with the kiddies. At rate, the movie is a lot better than the critics would have you believe. (All nationally-known critics but one panned this, as far as I know.) Kevin Costner performed one of his better acting jobs. It was nice to see Michael Madsen and Tom Sizemore as good guys. That's not seen in too many films! They were low-key characters, too. Dennis Quaid did a nice job as the fascinating "Doc Holliday." It's generally conceded that Val Kilmer's "Doc" in "Tombstone" was the best-ever, but Quaid version is just fine, thank you, and gets better and better with each viewing. This is a long movie, but it's never dull and it never overdoes the action, either. The cast is deep so you see a lot of familiar actors. As mentioned, this film is extremely underrated. I know most people prefer "Tombstone" but I'll take this version of the Earp saga any time! Rating:  - Not great but good.If you have the time this movie is watchable. It is a little long, but the actors do a good job playing their respected characters. Rating: - Print the legend.Kevin Costner richly deserves every raspberry and golden turkey he's earned, and probably deserves every respberry and golden turkey ever grown, raised, bred, or made. But in 1994, against all odds, the oddest actor in America made a masterpiece. The first hour of Wyatt Earp is insufferably Kevin. Almost every false Costner quirk that we know and loathe from almost endless repitition is on display. Then magic starts to happen. The dirty gritty magnificent grandeur of the West pulls even the constricted star of this movie into an approximation of greatness. For perhaps the first time in his life, and certainly for the first time in my experience, Costner fills a role without making it ridiculous. Before it's over, Costner's Wyatt Earp is the West, at least the longed for West of my imagination. Coster stares out a backlit window into the night, rain coming down, and says "Kill 'em all." It's yesterday -- 1881 -- once more. Most reviewers resent the amorphous sprawl of this movie, but life's like that, amorphous and sprawling and without tidy transitions. The movie gets the rampant manic energy of creative destruction that filled those years (at least in my imagination) after the war and before the Gilded Age and during the second or third of America's great depressions. And it gets the "accepted" record right, too, the things and places that (we believe) filled the days of the brothers, their wives and laudanum whores, their rowdy consumptive friends. It also gets & gives magic moments I've seen in no other film and probably can't describe. It's after the war; lawyer Earp & his family head west. There's a western town square, seen from above, the camera looking down perhaps from a two-story false front at a tough stringy old man who looks up at the camera as if he sees the strange glint of something from another century. It's as if we've wormholed back to 1867 and have caught a piece of time. Later, a fistfighter walks past the camera and out of the frame as if the camera was an unseen intruder transported from another time and place. This film has mythic power that approaches mystic power. It's a magnificent film. It's a magnificent genre.
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