Poff Holliday

The Pulp Fiction of westerns, with its vivid dialog and firestorm set pieces.

Also, Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer together in one film – and that’s a big YUM for the ladies. And a big Wish-I-Was-Him for the men. Russell’s and Kilmer’s opening scenes establish them as powerhouse masculines, something which this film veritably bleeds with, yet these two tower over every other dusty gunslinger and scenery-chomping henchman.

Russell is Wyatt Earp. We meet him alighting a train and whipping a wrangler across the face with his own whip for beating Earp’s horse, growling in a rasp that would make The Clint proud, “Hurts, don’t it?”

Kilmer is Doc Holliday. Drawing his guns like proverbial greased lightning in a card game gone sour, then knifing his antagonist and exiting stage right with a fistful of cash and a hard, sexy woman, Kilmer has only begun to amaze us… as he takes his character a mighty step further, endowing his Holliday with a pseudo-continental accent of his own nefarious design and an educated panache that we doubt anyone on the frontier could have seriously exhibited WITHOUT being a lightning gun (i.e. he’d be killed in a hot second for being such a dandy). To this day he has never commanded a role so deliciously elitist.

Yes, Tombstone is yet another Gunfight at the O.K. Corral – but related in such a way that this fact is peripheral to the characters at the heart of the tale.

Directed by George P. Cosmatos, written by Kevin Jarre, Tombstone presents a vision of the frontier as half brutal reality, half snakeskin Hollywood, all guilty pleasure. Ten times more entertaining than that OTHER Wyatt Earp - poor Kevin Costner’s epic, drawn-out, tedious June 1994 release, coming in a weary second to this film in release date and pure animal fun.

The Earp brothers, Wyatt (Russell), Virgil (Sam Elliott) and Morgan (Bill Paxton), with their three blond wives in tow, arrive in Tombstone, eager to settle in and seek their fortune. Wyatt especially wants to leave behind his bloody rep as a “Kansas lawdog.” The frontier has other ideas, crawling as it is with The Cowboys – rowdy, red-sashed troublemaking gunhands who “rule” the vicinity like mobsters; led by Curly Bill (Powers Boothe) and his sidekick, Johnny Ringo (Michael Biehn), the “deadliest pistolier since Wild Bill.”

As the trailer said, “Justice… is coming to Tombstone.”

Setting themselves up, unwillingly at first, as keepers of the peace, the Earp brothers’ fate inexorably leads to the gunfight at the you-know-where, due to The Cowboys refusing to disarm while within town limits, the Earps sensing anarchy in the air and attempting to simply disarm them where they had congregated behind the O.K. Corral.

Because this movie piles on so many entertaining vignettes, the O.K. is the least of our climaxes… Tombstone's greatest scenes appearing on either side of the O.K. (unlike Burt Lancaster's and Kirk Douglas's Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, 1957, which climaxed with the titular battle); Doc playing poker inebriated ("I have not yet begun to defile myself"); Ike Clanton raving (an overcheese performance by Stephen Lang, "Don't you ever try to manhandle a Cowboy, cos we'll cut your goddam pimp's heart out!"); the gunfight between Ringo and Holliday ("I'm your Huckleberry!")...

From Wyatt driving out the Faro dealer (Billy Bob Thornton):
WYATT: Just wanna let you know you’re sitting in my chair.
DEALER: Is that a fact?
WYATT: Yeh, that’s a fact.
DEALER: Well for a man that don’t go heels you run your mouth kinda reckless, dontcha?
WYATT: No need to go heels to get the bulge on a tub like you.
DEALER: Is that a fact?
WYATT: Mm, that’s a fact.
DEALER: [stands] I’m real scared.
WYATT: [moves in] Damn right, you’re scared! I can see that in your eyes.
DEALER: Alright – [reaching for gun]
WYATT: [steps to Dealer’s chest] Go ahead! Go ahead, skin it! Skin that smoke wagon and see what happens!
DEALER: [makes no move to draw] Listen Mr. I – I - I’m getting awful tired of you –
WYATT: [slaps Dealer] I’m getting’ tired of your gassing! Now jerk that pistol and go to work!... [slap] I said throw down boy! [slap]… You gonna do somethin’ or just stand there and bleed?”

…to the tasty, intelligent, LATIN exchange between Holliday and Ringo:
HOLLIDAY: …there's just something about him. Something around the eyes, I don't know, reminds me of... me. No. I'm sure of it, I hate him.
WYATT: [to Ringo] He's drunk.
HOLLIDAY: In vino veritas.
["In wine is truth" meaning: "When I'm drinking, I speak my mind"]
JOHNNY RINGO: Age quod agis.
["Do what you do" meaning: "Do what you do best"]
HOLLIDAY: Credat Judaeus apella, non ego.
["The Jew Apella may believe it, not I" meaning: "I don't believe drinking is what I do best"]
JOHNNY RINGO: [pats his gun] Eventus stultorum magister.
["Events are the teachers of fools" meaning: "Fools have to learn by experience"]
HOLLIDAY: [smiles] In pace requiescat.
["Rest in peace" meaning: "It's your funeral!"]

… this movie roars like a stallion on steel hooves, in a hail of Peacemaker gunfire and very real handlebar moustachios.


END