Review of Tombstone (1993) by Phillip D — 03 Nov 2013

Tombstone takes a different approach to its character drama than more stereotypical westerns do because of how it uses a musical score to enhance the drama in the scenes that follow such dramatics. Although this is an achievement, too many of the negative elements seated in Kevin Jarre's script remain dormant in Tombstone, predominantly the length of the script and excessive subplots which end up giving Tombstone a rather boring first hour to work with which is burdened by too much talking and not enough serious western drama when it was advertised as an action-adventure western, which makes it misleading. Although the first hour has all the film's technical benefits and talented actors, it's just boring and slow. Even though it's traditional for western films to be slow, Tombstone is slower than average but advertised otherwise which is troubling for the viewer, and much of it is mere melodrama.

Also, the musical score, although very well composed seems to be misplaced in a western-crime hybrid like Tombstone because it's more appropriately fitting to a Disney adventure movie due to its melodramatic nature, mixed with its light tone and brief movements of heaviness. It sounds weird, but keep your ears open watching Tombstone and you'll see what I mean.

Things turn around as the film enters its second half because the pacing between the drama and action is more balanced and the scenes tie together better, which makes it function at a more entertaining rate. But after a slow first hour, this more-or-less splits Tombstone into two films, with the former film being a slow and boring drama focused on character building and the latter being a brutal western drama with some visually impressive action. Lastly, much of the time Tombstone can't decide between being a crime drama or a western, but only succeeds in blending particular elements of them together while coming up short in other areas.

Really, a lot of the troubles with Tombstone can be attributed to Kevin Jarre whose poor story writing and scripting "skills" didn't give Tombstone such a strong setup and left it to everyone else to fix. Luckily enough they did, and even more luckily Kevin Jarre didn't end up directing Tombstone, because had he done that then there isn't much to say that Tombstone would have been better than Kevin Costner's competing western flop from the same year, Wyatt Earp. Luckily Tombstone had, among other things, a very talented cast to hold it up.

Kurt Russell is exceptional in Tombstone. He's not just incredibly strong at articulating his characters emotions for the dramatic scenes, but he's incredibly intimidating too. Even though some of his lines a poorly written, he uses a natural skill as a heroic actor to spearhead the role of Wyatt Earp and ensure that he transcends the norms of a cowboy to make himself a lawman, and an actor as talented as Kurt Russell cannot and does not fail at that. He does an excellent job, and one of his most heroic next to his iconic Snake Plissken.

Val Kilmer continues to impress me, because in Tombstone he makes use of a stare, a particular stare that looks into the soul of the viewer and says "don't piss Wyatt Earp off" and convinces us that he truly is Wyatt Earp. Tombstone serves as a front for him to make use of his greatest skills as an actor again, and it proves to be one of the finest benefits of Tombstone. He is solid and powerful in Tombstone.

Sam Elliot was also awesome because he has a western warrior persona to him which he plays to the benefit of Tombstone in a really powerful manner and creates a strong character from Virgil Earp.

Bill m Paxton, Michael Biehn and Billy Zane were also good, and essentially the entire ensemble cast was a good decision.

And the production design, costume, cinematography and film editing on Tombstone are all astounding and very convincing in setting the mood of the story and the time it comes from, and it just adds to the visual credibility of the movie, as does the awesome shootout scenes which feature a combination of all the films technical achievements as well as proper sound effects and editing as well as a a sense of real intensity.

So overall, Tombstone is lacking in pacing as the main problem, but the cast and cinematography is too good to ignore.