My Review of 'Tombstone'

Tombstone has been one of my favorite movies for a long time. I remember watching it when I was younger and always remembered how Val Kilmer's Doc Holliday stole the show. He played a hilarious slick gunman suffering from tuberculosis.

After seeing the movie recently, I've noticed that movies are made very differently today. Back in 1993 when Tombstone first came out, filmmakers were allowed to take their time to develop characters and westerns really need this. It's incredibly different to watch this movie in 2019 because there are scenes that I felt were dragged out a bit too long now. This of course could be because my attention span has become worse with media coming at me so quickly nowadays. How could it be that my attention span got worse as I got older? You'd think that a pre-teen version of me would have way less patience for a movie than I would now.

That's not to say that I still didn't enjoy the movie. I really hope it isn't because of nostalgia. I watched it with a few friends and they seemed to enjoy it as well.

This movie is based loosely on real events. Wyatt Earp, played by Kurt Russell moves to Tombstone, Arizona, to start fresh with his brothers Virgil, played by Sam Elliott, and Morgan, played by Bill Paxton. They quickly make a name for themselves in this new town and establish a business at one of the saloons.

Unfortunately for everyone in the movie, they all live in the wild west in a time when there's no law. Virgil is a former law man and he can't take the craziness happening in Tombstone so he becomes the towns new sheriff. Consequently Morgan does the same because he wants to help out his brother. As a result, they quickly become enemies to a notorious cowboy gang. So you can imagine the drama and craziness that happens next.

The cast was really well picked. All of them pretty much became stars later on after this movie. They all did a great job, especially Val Kilmer, who like I said earlier really steals the show. I thought they all did a great job and it's really weird seeing how young they are in this movie.

There are a few scenes there that I don't particularly enjoy. There are a few romantic scenes with Wyatt Earp and Josephine Marcus, played by Dana Delany that I thought kind of dragged the movie a bit. They really didn't have to have this storyline but I guess I understand that they wanted to appeal to a wider audience. Really the movie could have done better without it. There's also this purely 90s gun scene that I thought was purely ridiculous with Wyatt Earp. Watching this with my friends kind of made me embarrassed because I had suggested watching it and this scene made me cringe.

It's a movie of a different pace. Western movies are generally like this. They have a lot of expedition montages, there's of course tons of stare downs and there's of course a ton of friendship development dialogue added to the mix. Westerns aren't for everyone. I can see how a generation today won't have the attention span for these types of movies but it's really worth a try once in a while.

Overall, I still liked this movie but it's kind of lost a little of the magic that it had when I was younger. It's still worth watching but not the masterpiece that I remembered it to be. I'll have to give this movie a 7 out of 10. It hurts me to say this but the movie didn't age with me as well as I thought. That happens though. There's a few movies that I'll re-watch and I'll think to myself, "How did I enjoy this movie?" This isn't to that level but there were a few scenes that kind of ruined the movie for me.