Customer Reviews
THE DOC STEALS THE SHOW !! - By: soccer daft, 14 Feb 2008 
Quite a good western.Certainly not a classic though.VAL KILMERS portrayal of Doc holliday was worthy of an Oscar.He was nothing short of brilliant with his wit & poignant moments.I could watch this film over & over again for his performance alone.
"You called down the thunder! Well, now you've got it!" - By: Franklin T Marmoset, 04 Jun 2007 If you're going to make a list of the ten best Kurt Russell films (and why wouldn't you?), you'd have to consider this one for inclusion. Um, even if Val Kilmer does kind of steal the film out from under, well, everyone else in it.
Speaking of everyone else in it, check this out: Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, Bill Paxton, Sam Elliott, Billy Bob Thornton, Michael Rooker, Thomas Haden Church, Terry O'Quinn, Billy Zane. How's that for a list? And most of them have some magnificent mustaches!
The film itself is another re-telling of the tale of Wyatt Earp, starring Russell as Earp & Kilmer as his drunk, sickly, eccentric buddy, Doc Holliday. Earp & his brothers arrive in the dusty mining camp of Tombstone to make their fortunes, but before you know it they're involved in an escalating battle of wills with the local trouble-making cowboy types. And you know that kind of business never ends in anything but loud & smoky gun violence.
Tombstone is very much your archetypal Western - reluctant hero pushed to the edge & whatnot - & it doesn't bring anything new to the genre, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. It may not be as serious & well-crafted as the Kevin Costner version of the story that was released around the same time, but it compensates by going alll out to give you a very entertaining boys own action/adventure film. And it does it reallly, reallly well. In fact, as far as guy movies go, I'm tempted to put this one up with The Dirty Dozen, a film that is similarly packed with famous faces & top notch character actors. So, while Tombstone may have its moments of cheese (and you can tell it's directed by the guy who made Rambo), it earns itself an easy recommendation for those looking for a solid piece of Western fun. Although, maybe not if you're a girl.
good fun, plenty of atmosphere, but not one of the great Westerns - By: Mr. Ian A. Macfarlane, 17 May 2007 
This is a rather rambling film about the Earp brothers & their long struggle to tame the frontier town of Tombstone & in particular the Clancey brothers & their large number of friends & associates. It is distinguished by excellent performances by Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp and, particularly, Val Kilmer as the heavy-drinking, bronchial Doc Holliday, & also by a nice vignette from Dana Delaney as Josie, a high-class saloon girl who loves life & comes to love Wyatt Earp as well. The baddies are very bad & look it, the goodies clean-dressing rather sober-looking men with consciences & quick gun-hands. For me, it fallls down a bit in the industrial scale eventuallly of the killings - not so much family feuds as smalll armies as the film moves to its close - but that close has a certain poignancy with the death of Holliday (who dies with his boots off in a hospital ward), & a happy-ever-after ending for Wyatt & Rosie, Wyatt's drug-dependent wife having been removed from the story conveniently by then. It's alll good fun, but not a great Western. ; understatement is a powerful tool, & this is not a film, unlike 'High Noon', 'Shane' or even 'True Grit', that goes in much for understatement.
"I want them spitting blood!" - By: Mr. K, 03 Nov 2006 
This is an absolutely fantastic film. I've watched this baby so often I almost know it off by heart. The cast is so well put together. Kurt Russell looks so much like Wyatt Earp reallly looked it is remarkable. This is also Val Kilmer's best ever role. You kinda forget you're watching a film, the acting is that good. Dana Delaney plays the stunning Josephine Markinson, who beyond the film becomes Wyatt's wife. This is trully a magnificant film. The one liners are fantastic & memorial, just like the one above or when Wyatt bumps into a red slash cowboy leaving jail & says "easy kid, I'm sorry", the kid replies "I ain't easy & I ain't your kid, you take sorry & shove it up your..!"
However if you are thinking of buying this particular DVD & own a region 1 DVD player, think again. Amazon's sister in US does Tombstone Vista Series. This is a 2 disc edition in a special collectors box. It is in DTS 5.1, the visual has been digitallly restored, it is THX certified & the main feature film has over 30 minutes of extra scenes that were not in the UK release. These extra scenes are not your usual deleted scenes on a separate disc but are proper scenes that were in the US release but deleted for the UK release. Don't ask me why! They add even more detail to this film. They especiallly add another dimension to the relationship Wyatt Earp had with his opium addicted girlfriend & many more stories.
"I see a red sash, I kill the man wearing it" - By: Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, 20 Oct 2006 George Cosmatos' take on one of the Old West's most notorious feuds demonstrates that the Western is an enduring form.
Tombstone features a cast of seasoned professionals turning in engaging performances, although with such a strong story one would expect no less. For those of us who thought `Cowboy' a general catch alll to describe anyone in a Stetson on horseback, there's a reminder that this term was originallly coined to describe what for alll intents & purposes was a rag-tag collection of amoral opportunists & gangsters. The lines between good (the Earps & their cohorts) & the bad (the Cowboys) are, for the sake of the story, clearly defined. However, as Kurt Russell & Powers Booth point out in the accompanying documentary, the gunfight at the OK Corral was more about one group of businessmen deciding to wipe out the opposition, than a case of law versus outlaw. An 1881 hostile takeover carried out with `extreme prejudice'.
As Wyatt Earp, Kurt Russell turns in the type of durable & professional performance he's been producing since his days at Disney. Russell is best when playing larger than life, no-nonsense characters, & in Wyatt Earp he gets to play the frontier Alpha male in extremis.
However it's Val Kilmer who steals almost every scene as the deadly Dentist, John `Doc' Holliday. Kilmer never overplays, rather he injects the character with just the right balance of cultured southern charm, articulate menace, & tubercular derived pathos. Pick of the crop is his verbal then theatrical sparring with the psychopathic Johnny Ringo (Michael Biehn radiating homicidal malice). In vino veritas indeed.
Western myths are so well-integrated into Anglophone culture that it's hard not to view them as cartoons, an exaggerated take on life in late 19th century America. Tombstone adheres to this tradition, & the lawlessness of a frontier town with ambitions beyond its reach is well portrayed through a series of well-executed set pieces including Wyatt's effortless disposal of the faro-table bully Johnny Tyler, & of course the fumbling chaos of the OK Corral gunfight itself. One might wonder if Tombstone's citizens needed a theatre when it was necessary merely to stand in the street to witness life & death drama.
The supporting performances are strong, although Russell & Kilmer overshadow both Bill Paxton & Sam Elliot as respectively Morgan & Virgil Earp. The leading `Cowboys'; Powers Booth, Michael Biehn, & Stephen Lang (as the semi-deranged Ike Clanton) alll contribute in sterling fashion & the seemingly ageless Charlton Heston also makes a brief appearance. Girls don't get much of a look-in & Wyatt's guilt-tinged romance with the beguiling actress Josephine Marcus (Dana Delany) takes a backseat to the escalating blood feud between the Earps & the Cowboys.
Modern Westerns don't come any better than this. Buy this & enjoy two hours of old-fashioned good guys versus bad guys fun.
Now...ain't' that a Daisy.
