The Quick and the Dead
by Sam Raimi
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Gene Hackman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, Sharon Stone, Tobin BellDirector: Sam Raimi
Brand: STONE,SHARON
Producer: Sharon Stone
Producer: Allen Shapiro
Producer: Chuck Binder
Producer: Joshua Donen
Producer: Patrick Markey
Producer: Robert G. Tapert
Writer: Simon Moore
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 107 minutes
Published: 1998-09-01
DVD Release Date: 2004-07-15
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Movie Reviews of The Quick and the Dead
Movie Review: A BAD MOVIE MUST!
Summary: 5 Stars
Director Sam Raimi, (the Detroit auteur behind the three EVIL DEAD epics), offers a trippy treatise on gunfight films including John Ford's MY DARLING CLEMINTINE, Fred Zinnemann's HIGH NOON, Howard Hawks' RIO BRAVO, Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH, Sergio Leone's THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY and Clint Eastwood's UNFORGIVEN. However, despite Raimi's best hyper-stylized efforts, he just can't disguise the fact that this western vanity project for Sharon Stone is about as compelling as a 30-second fragrance commercial.
It's 1878 and formidable saddle tramp Stone rides into the Arizona town of Redemption (a good name for a western-style perfume), looking to indulge a basic instinct. No, not that one. She wants vengeance -- via flashbacks we learn that the bad-apple mayor Gene Hackman is responsible for the death of her marshal father Gary Sinise. A six-gun in her holster, a smoldering cigarette in her mouth and her hair fashionably disheveled, she does what any narrow-eyed, post-Clint Eastwood character would: She tries to stay out of trouble by hanging out in a bar frequented by killers, outlaws and cutthroats. As soon as she dismounts, she's fighting off the sweaty advances of an ex-con Mark Boone Junior. "I need a woman," he says, breathing hot lust in her face. "You need a bath," she sneers in a put-down that represents the height of the film's verbal wit.
Just in time for a quick-draw shooting contest sponsored by Hackman, Stone watches as a collection of overly-familiar archetypes sign up, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Hackman's tough-talking, swaggery son; Keith David, a pipe-smoking shootist; Lance Henriksen, who can fire holes through playing cards from a distance; and outlaw-turned-preacher Russell Crowe, whose pretty Australian looks have since engendered better scripts than this one for him.
After Stone saves Crowe from an early exit with a dazzling display of gunplay, she's practically obliged to join the competition. The rest of the movie is a series of one-on-one shootouts with the contestants narrowing down until there is a final winner. ( If you're wondering how well Stone will do -- even after the credits inform us that she's a co-producer -- our hearts go out to you.)
Raimi bombards us with frenetic editing, crazy-angle shots, and hilariously exaggerated gunshot exit wounds. But all the stylistic sleight of hand in the world can't hide the fact that the star of the show is more Dead than Quick. Stone seems to conceive of acting as a series of fixed facial expressions. She has two in all -- like someone playing with Peking opera masks. Her first is the tight-lipped, don't-mess-with-me glare, which she brings into town. Her second consists of wide-eyed, forlorn anxiety, which occurs every time she sets eyes on Hackman. Suffice it to say, there hasn't been acting this mechanical since "Speed Racer."
Hackman at least provides entertaining glimmers of villainy. "I could give you more money than you could spend," he tells Stone, by way of a marriage proposal. "I'd never feel like I'd earned it," she says. "Oh yes you would," he says with that patented Hackman chuckle. And as he takes on everyone save the kitchen help, THE QUICK AND THE DEAD packs in so many cliches, you're amazed it's not a parody of the spaghetti westerns it seeks to emulate. Like watching an expert marksmans who's drawn his gun only to shoot himself in the foot, just sit back and enjoy this wildly staged Bad Movie must!
Summary of The Quick and the Dead
A mysterious young woman shows up at a fight-to-the-finish gunslinger contest to seek revenge for her father's death years earlier.Genre: Westerns
Rating: R
Release Date: 2-MAY-2006
Media Type: DVD
Director Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead) tries gamely to recapture the exotic mysteries of spaghetti Westerns in this stylish but empty film, which stars Sharon Stone as a stranger who comes to the town of Redemption in time for an annual shooting contest. Her real motivations for being there are the stuff that might have found their way into a film by Sergio Leone--in fact, much of this film is a pastiche of Leone's greatest hits, including A Fistful of Dollars and Once upon a Time in America--but one can't quite believe Stone in the role. Gene Hackman gives a predictably solid performance as the town tyrant, and Leonardo DiCaprio is good as a lucky young gunslinger who gets to kiss the heroine. But not even the cast can help this failed project. Raimi brings a lot of razzle-dazzle to his camera work, but it doesn't make the film any more substantial. --Tom Keogh
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