Word: earp
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...play Wyatt Earp heroically, as a mythopoeic legend of the Old West, riding out of some misty nowhsere to bring peace, justice and other good values to the American frontier. You can play him antiheroically (which is probably closer to the historical truth), as a wandering thug who, when he isn't dealing faro or looking for a gold strike, occasionally makes a living as a peace officer not entirely immune to corruption. What you shouldn't do -- especially at 3 hours and 15 minutes, a length that implicitly promises epic grandeur -- is turn his story into a solemn biopic...
...director of Wyatt Earp, Lawrence Kasdan (he also wrote the screenplay with Dan Gordon), is obviously of the school that believes all inclusiveness is a reasonable trade-off for insight. Or maybe, like a lot of literary biographers these days, he can't bear to omit any of his research. But his approach prevents Wyatt Earp from developing a compelling dramatic arc, and it doesn't help a rather glum and withdrawn Kevin Costner make the eponymous protagonist into a dynamic or even very attractive figure. Mostly he is fate's pawn, grimly enduring one damn thing after another...
...doesn't have much in the way of inner resources. Aside from the good reflexes that make him handy with a revolver, all he has to go on is some dubious advice from his moralizing father (Gene Hackman): put your trust in blood kin and in the law. What Earp sees in his brothers is impossible to say, since they are so poorly particularized -- and encumbered with unpleasantly fractious wives to boot. Wyatt himself tolerates a thoroughly depressing relationship with a common-law wife (Mare Winningham), as they all lurch querulously toward the legendary gunfight with another extended family...
...more conventional movie figures who fare best in this lugubrious context. Dennis Quaid is Doc Holliday, the tubercular gunman-gambler, who gallantly and sardonically confronts his mortality, and Joanna Going plays Josie, the smart, spunky romantic who is Earp's last great passion. These are familiar, forthright characters, and the actors energize the film by playing them with headlong confidence...
...little and too late. And oddly enough, too soon as well. Wyatt Earp drones past its logical conclusion, which is, of course, the great shoot-out. Since Earp's life uninstructively limped along after that event, so must the movie, further abusing our overtaxed patience and undertaxed intelligence...