I was interested in the thread on the Sam Peckinpah movie "The Wild Bunch," which almost everyone will admit was a great western movie, certainly one of the best. William Holden and Ernie Borgnine were the standouts in the cast.
So as not to hijack that thread, I thought I'd get some views on what you consider to be the best western movie ever made.
Some come to mind - Shane, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, High Noon, The Man who killed Liberty Valence, The Searchers, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Stagecoach, Unforgiven, Lonesome Dove, True Grit (both versions) The Shootist, etc. All great. But the best ever?
I'll start this off. My pick is Tombstone. Kurt Russell did a masterful job of portraying Wyatt Earp as a man with ice water in his veins, as a loyal brother, and as a man with an extremely vengeful nature. Val Kilmer did a superb job of playing the flawed, bucolic and ultimately doomed Doc Holliday. Technically, there were a few glitches (The Birdcage Theatre is shown when the Earps came into town, but it didn't exist until a bit later in Tombstone's history). The firearms used were authentic, and very well researched. The OK Corral fight was staged to be as close as possible to contemporary accounts of that fracas. All the characters were developed nicely, and their interplay fairly accurately depicted things as they were in the 1880s. The Clanton gang came across as really bad guys right from the opening scenes. I think the picture really gives you a flavor of Arizona Territory in the later years of the 1800s. True West magazine called it one of the 5 greatest Westerns ever made. It gets my vote and a hearty "well done." I don't think that it will ever be equaled.
Your mileage may vary. What do you say?
John
So as not to hijack that thread, I thought I'd get some views on what you consider to be the best western movie ever made.
Some come to mind - Shane, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, High Noon, The Man who killed Liberty Valence, The Searchers, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Stagecoach, Unforgiven, Lonesome Dove, True Grit (both versions) The Shootist, etc. All great. But the best ever?
I'll start this off. My pick is Tombstone. Kurt Russell did a masterful job of portraying Wyatt Earp as a man with ice water in his veins, as a loyal brother, and as a man with an extremely vengeful nature. Val Kilmer did a superb job of playing the flawed, bucolic and ultimately doomed Doc Holliday. Technically, there were a few glitches (The Birdcage Theatre is shown when the Earps came into town, but it didn't exist until a bit later in Tombstone's history). The firearms used were authentic, and very well researched. The OK Corral fight was staged to be as close as possible to contemporary accounts of that fracas. All the characters were developed nicely, and their interplay fairly accurately depicted things as they were in the 1880s. The Clanton gang came across as really bad guys right from the opening scenes. I think the picture really gives you a flavor of Arizona Territory in the later years of the 1800s. True West magazine called it one of the 5 greatest Westerns ever made. It gets my vote and a hearty "well done." I don't think that it will ever be equaled.
Your mileage may vary. What do you say?
John
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