Classic (& cheesy): George Cosmatos' TOMBSTONE

 TOMBSTONE

Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Dana Delany, Powers Boothe, Sam Elliott. Dir. George P. Cosmatos, Hollywood Pictures, 1993

Some history. While our filmic portrait of Maj. Gen. George Armstrong Custer shifted from silent-era mythmaking like THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON to John Ford's FORT APACHE and later works depicting Custer as a vainglorious fool who led his men to certain, and preventable, massacre at the hands of Sitting Bull and a few thousand angry Sioux warriors, the story of Wyatt Earp & Doc Holliday at the OK Corral has never shed its mythos onscreen, despite telling the story in about every conceivable way.

There's good reason for that. Boiled down, the true story suggests the Earps, with or without Holliday, gunned down a group of business rivals, who may/may not have been armed at the time. Evading prosecution, Wyatt Earp went on gilding that lily for the rest of his life, until the saga of the wronged Earp Brothers and their holy crusade became inextricable from actual history. 

No movie depicts the true OK Corral because it's the opposite of myth. It's tawdry, brutal frontier reality, dressed up as the glorious history of what Billy Zane's character calls, "the quintessential frontier type." It might make an interesting antihero character study, but it wouldn't be much fun.

George Cosmatos's TOMBSTONE pushes the fun, even when it might be better served going a bit darker. I opined on twitter "surely TOMBSTONE has outlived the cheese..." after noting the movie's "good cheesey" '90s rep, because I wanted to assert TOMBSTONE as an All Timer, as well as Great '90s Western. After this viewing, I retract my comment. 

TOMBSTONE IS an All Timer western & a great western of its decade, and it's still "good cheesey." That's just part of the film's nature, and its ongoing fan appeal.

Many bad things occur to the Earp family in Tombstone, Az., as they run afoul of what narrator Robert Mitchum tells us - wrongly - is "the earliest example of  organized crime in the US," the Cowboys, led by Powers Boothe & Michael Biehn. Pushed up against it, onetime US Marshall Wyatt Earp takes up the badge once more, if only to exterminate the Cowboys under law's aegis. Cosmatos folds in family drama - the Earp boys have lively wives - romance with Dana Delany playing Earp's common law wife, Josie Marcus, an openly-gay character (Jason Priestley), opium addiction, and one of the decade's most awe inspiring casts, including everyone from Russell to Bill Paxton to Billy Bob Thornton & John Ford regular Harry Caray, Jr.

I consider TOMBSTONE still-cheesey for the same reason as in the '90s: no moment in this movie does not play as earth-shattering drama. TOMBSTONE parades across the screen with one fist clenched & ready to do the Tiger Woods pump for its entire length. Even its darker moments, involving Joanna Pacula's laudunum addiction or Kilmer's dissipation, play with an epic feel to them. TOMBSTONE never doesn't swing for the fences, and same goes for its cast.

If Cosmatos overamps most every frame he also provides Kilmer, Russell, Boothe & Biehn ample scenery upon which to gnaw. As I watched this "Director's Cut" (more later) today, it struck me that while neither Kilmer nor Russell received Oscar noms for TOMBSTONE, nor could I imagine them getting nominated, I remember both roles today yet have no idea who won in '93.

Everyone talks about Kilmer's searing performance as a self destructive, self pitying Holliday, but it's Russell I've returned to admire over 29 years. Russell plays Earp to fit Zane's description: "...behold the eyes, closed by the sun yet sharp as a hawk. He has the look of both predator & prey." Played against Kilmer's Holliday & the tagteam of Elliott & Paxton Russell appears subdued by comparison, but it's his subdued, suffering man-of-two-masters which holds my attention. 

As I suspected, this "Director's Cut" restores a scene between Russell & Pacula, a few seconds of Kilmer's Holliday reciting verse, & the leadup to Michael Rooker's unpleasant demise - some sixish minutes, altogether, adding slight color but detracting nothing in their absence from the theatrical cut. Best reason to own this 2-disc slipcased deluxe edition is Cosmatos's director's commentary.

Fun revisiting this longtime favorite, & sweet to own a nice, fancy new package. TOMBSTONE may count by now as a great western, & one of the greats of the 1990s, but if it feels a little more overemphatic, a little more over the top, than like stories from Golden Age H'wood,  Michael Curtiz's DODGE CITY, starring Eroll Flynn & Olivia DeHavilland, is no less a puff-pastry. In fact, DODGE CITY lent itself to film history - Mel Brooks modeled the climactic brawl of BLAZING SADDLES on a saloon-fight from early in Curtiz's picture - in a way TOMBSTONE has not (though the dearth of westerns over the last 30 years makes it a ludicrous comparison.)

Not all westerns work like Ford or Hawks at their best. They don't need to. SHANE jerks a few tears. CAT BALLOU is both self aware and silly. They also count as classics these days. TOMBSTONE does not gain unexpected gravitas with the years. Its performances do not accidentally offer trenchant contemporary commentary. It's entirely the film George Cosmatos released in 1993. By now, however, that's a great thing all by itself.