Wyatt Earp [HD DVD]

Flawed but impressive epic western comes to DVD
Larger than life and with twice as many brothers, "Wyatt Earp" struts onto the DVD scene in a "Special Edition" that looks stunning but is less filling than one might have expected. This sprawling episodic tale begins with Wyatt as a child preparing to run away from home and join the Union army like his brothers Virgil and James. His father (Gene Hackman in a brief but powerful performance)catches him as he leaves and returns him back home. While Wyatt clearly yearns from the adventure he feels his brothers are experiencing, his father knows the truth about war and sets him straight.

Later, James and Virgil return home both exhausted and beat up from serving in the army. Their father has put on his traveling shoes and announces that the family will be moving West where there's opportunity for a lawyer and rich land is ready to be farmed.

Wyatt after many trials and tribulations ends up out west as a lawman. He manages to interest his brothers in coming out to...

Wyatt Earp was a Man
A lot of people forget that Wyatt Earp was a real man who had more courage and integrity then most people you will ever know. This movie is a pretty accurate portrayl of that man. Kevin Costner and Dennis Quaid (Doc Holliday) do a superb job, although the supporting cast has a lot to be desired. This movie differs from the movie "Tombstone", in that it portrays a lot of Wyatt's life from being a teenager during the Civil War to his and Josie's adventure to the Alaskan gold fields near the turn of the century. "Tombstone" deals primarily with the happenings in Wyatt's life in that one town, which ironically dealt with less than 2 years of his long adventurous life. I liked this film because it dealt with an approximate 35 year time span of Wyatt's life, and the movie is long enough to dipict this. There are a lot of historical accuracies in the movie which include proper representations of places and dialogue such as what is said on the way to and...

Dramatic and Entertaining
Historical inaccuracies aside, this movie was the best I've seen in a long while. Kevin Costner was even colder than usual (as in "For the Love of the Game"), an expressionless look on his face for much of the movie, but anything else would not have done justice to the character. The supporting cast was unremarkable, but Dennis Quaid as Doc Holliday was incredible...in my opinion, he stole the show and deserved much more screen time. While many of the Earp brothers (excluding Wyatt, of course) were faceless and often difficult if not impossible to tell apart, Quaid captured Doc Holliday's character in every action--speaking, riding, making one of those cynical and hilarious one-liners (Like when Wyatt confides in Doc that he is his closest friend, and Holliday replies, after a long silence, "Shut up," or when he comments that Wyatt wants to be a lawman and an outlaw, getting "the best of both worlds."). It took me a considerable amount of time, at least an hour, to finally believe...

Click to Editorial Reviews