A comic-book Western that’s not actually based on a comic book, Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead features whips, whinnies, and whistles on the soundtrack, more close-ups on steely eyes than you can count, and a camera that zooms, swishes, and pans with the velocity of a bullet, sometimes literally. It’s fun for a while—especially when the framing echoes the dynamic compositions of a good comic—if not enough for a fully satisfying genre exercise. Sharon Stone stars as Ellen, a dusty drifter who rides into the desert town of Redemption to partake in an annual, lethal shootout tournament run by crime boss John Herod (Gene Hackman). Of all the homages going on here, I liked Stone’s take on Clint Eastwood’s “Man with No Name” archetype best. She not only impressively mimics Eastwood’s grins and grimaces, but also allows a bit of fear to seep into her eyes. She’s certainly a more credible presence in this milieu than Leonardo DiCaprio, a year before Romeo + Juliet, as a loudmouth gunslinger who would fit better on a contemporary teen magazine cover than an Old West wanted poster. Hackman, just a few years away from winning an Oscar for Eastwood’s revisionist Western Unforgiven, brings gusto to a similarly villainous part, but he’s working with far inferior material. Simon Moore’s script is light on character development and heavy on religious shorthand, especially when it comes to Russell Crowe’s Cort—a former outlaw turned preacher whom Herod forces to participate in the contest. This leads to a lot of faux morality about violence and revenge, all of which would need far more than a few years’ distance from Unforgiven to really register as thoughtful.
(4/3/2025)
