Unlimitedia Sick Product of a Sick System

Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.

ShangLuda Admirable film.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

vertmangue There is something to be said for watching a film out of its time, specifically 45 or so years after its debut. DOC is many things besides not historically factual. True, it is a revisionist western. It may be a comment on Viet-Nam at the time or it may be a metaphor on American cultural icons having feet of clay. Other reviewers have dissected the film with keener insight than I. Having never seen the film until this weekend, there was something about the relationship scenes between Doc and Wyatt that felt uncomfortable for me: The touching, the caring, the glancing, the prolonged camera shifts between the eyes of these two friends who once had a "history" (unexplored), a separation (also unexplored), and now a reconciliation of sorts (semi-explored). There's no love, or even, like lost between Wyatt and Katie. Wyatt watches his friend and a woman move into their "honeymoon cottage" with a knowing sorrow. There's a femininity that pervades this film that doesn't just come from Dunaway's Katie Elder. Even the roll-on-the-ground fight scenes are somehow less than violent. The camera lingers just a bit too long on the wrestling Earp brothers scenes at the ranch. The fight between Ike and Wyatt reminded me more of gay-bashing incidents in NYC that I've read about than any "street-fight" I've witnessed in a HS corridor over the years .... Film history is replete with subtle nods to non-heterosexual sublimity. Hollywood even made a documentary to that effect. I suppose if you know you're going to revise western history you may as well do it with panache ...

shepardjessica Stacy Keach, who plays Doc Holliday in this film, made some incredible films between 1968 and 1974 and this is a Western epic (where he's the lead for a change) and kicks some Western butt on an old legend about Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, the west and Faye Dunaway plays Kate. Check out this early 70's GOOD FILM about America.Harris Yulin (who nobody knows) did plays and other films with Keach in the good old days - I'm not even into westerns since The Wild Bunch and The Man With No Name fllms, this script was Pretty Much on the mark about these cats! The old west, no guns allowed in Tombstone (SAYS WHO?) These guys, with worthy adversaries, and great dialogue in a movie nobody saw (unless, in 1971, you were a revisionist like Squint Eastwood did 20 years later in Unforgiven (a great film). Anyway, if you can find it (and Judy Collins' kid brother plays Billy in this) the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral will never be the same (no matter what your fantasies are concerning Western fact). Keach was the man for seven years. Trust me - I saw him on stage in New York and London. Well worth your time (Keach, Dunaway, and Harris Yulin fans), especially if you like Westerns cutting against the grade (even then); highly recommended (resembles The Hired Hand by Peter Fonda).

Blaise_B The best thing about this film is the first half hour, the classic posturing in the first scene ("We ain't got no cold beer"), Doc and Kate Elder's damaged courtship, a stark, music-less ride across scorching desert. The first glimpse of Tombstone (the town, not the movie) is equally exhilarating, everything is dirty and chaotic, men are fighting in the streets. From that point on, much of the film is boring and slow, though there was enough to hold my attention throughout. Seeing how the story will unfold is the most riveting aspect. The ending is satisfying enough, as is the script's odd take on how and why Doc wound up in the fateful gunfight at the coral. The performances are good all around. It warrants mentioning here that this movie is no more historically accurate than other films on the subject. Two major inconsistencies were already mentioned, and most historians' and witnesses' accounts have Doc playing a much more active role in events leading up to the fight. The overall feel of the film, though, is much more believable than your average Hollywood western. That's probably the most satisfying thing here next to the cast: the physical details, the look and feel. Just pretend the characters are all made up. And don't watch it if you're already in a bad mood.

wabranty Ignoring the major historical inaccuracies (Virgil was the Marshal of Tombstone and not Wyatt; Doc and Katie Elder were together long before they both came to Tombstone; etc.), the film attempts to make Doc and Wyatt out as the mob bosses of the Tombstone. "Tombstone" (the Costner film) was much more historically accurate.