| Wyatt Earp | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Lawrence Kasdan |
| Written by |
|
| Produced by |
|
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Owen Roizman |
| Edited by | Carol Littleton |
| Music by | James Newton Howard |
Production companies |
|
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
Release date |
|
Running time | 190 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $63 million[2] |
| Box office | $55.9 million[3] |
Wyatt Earp is a 1994 AmericanepicbiographicalWesterndrama film about thelawman of the same name. Directed byLawrence Kasdan, who co-wrote the screenplay withDan Gordon, the film follows Earp from his early life to his career as a marshal and his involvement in theO.K. Corral gunfight.[4] It features anensemble cast led byKevin Costner as Earp, withGene Hackman,Mark Harmon,Michael Madsen,Bill Pullman,Dennis Quaid,Isabella Rossellini,Tom Sizemore,JoBeth Williams, andMare Winningham in supporting roles.
The film was developed in competition withTombstone, another adaptation of Earp's life and the O.K. Corral gunfight that came out six months earlier. Released on June 24, 1994,Wyatt Earp received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the performances and Kasdan's direction, but criticized the three-hour runtime and unfavorably compared it toTombstone.[5] It was abox office failure, grossing $55.9 million on a $63 million budget.[6]
During theAmerican Civil War, teenagedWyatt Earp lives on his family's farm inPella, Iowa, while his older brothersVirgil andJames serve with theUnion Army. Wyatt attempts to run away, intending to lie about his age and join his brothers in the war, but his father catches him. His brothers return home at the war's end, with James gravely wounded, and the family moves west to start over. Wyatt sees a man being shot dead in a duel and vomits at the sight.
Years later, a teenaged Wyatt works as a wagon driver and earns extra money by acting as a referee for boxing matches. A bully tries to shoot him after a drunken argument, but Wyatt disarms him, taking his gun. Returning home toMissouri, Wyatt marries his childhood sweetheart, Urilla Sutherland. They move into their own house, and he begins working as a lawman. Months later, his pregnant wife dies fromtyphoid fever. After staying by her side through the illness, Wyatt becomes deeply depressed. Burning their home and possessions, he begins drinking and drifts from town to town, landing inPine Bluff, Arkansas. He robs a man and steals his horse but is quickly arrested. With Wyatt facing certain hanging, his father bails him out of jail, telling him to never return to Arkansas.
Working as a buffalo hunter, Wyatt befriendsBat Masterson and his brotherEd Masterson. Years pass, and Wyatt becomes a deputy marshal inWichita, Kansas, building a reputation as a man unafraid to enforce the law. He is recruited to work for the police force inDodge City, with a lower salary but earning extra money for every arrest. Wyatt becomes romantically involved with a prostitute,Mattie Blaylock, and persuades the Mastersons to come on as his deputies. Wyatt believes Ed is too passive, but the Dodge City council fires Wyatt for repeated complaints ofexcessive force, appointing Ed to take his place. Wyatt starts working for the railroad to catch robbers.
Pursuing outlawDave Rudabaugh, Wyatt is introduced to gunman and gamblerDoc Holliday inFort Griffin, Texas, and the two become friends. Holliday assists Earp in locating Rudabaugh, whom he dislikes tremendously. Wyatt receives word that Ed has been killed, having shot and killed both his assailants before dying in the street. Wyatt returns to Dodge City and soon after kills his first man, witnessed by actressJosie Marcus. Despite his brothers' wives' and Mattie's protests, Wyatt moves the family toTombstone, Arizona and immediately finds himself at odds with the outlaw Cowboy gang. He becomes romantically involved with Josie Marcus, angering her boyfriendSheriff Behan and stressing his relationship with Mattie, and becomes the subject of rumor about town.
Wyatt and his brothersMorgan and Virgil arrest several Cowboys, and Virgil assumes the post of head marshal following the murder ofFred White byCurly Bill Brocius. Tension builds between the brothers and the gang as Wyatt breaks up several altercations involving the Cowboys, particularlyIke Clanton, and Holliday swears his loyalty to Wyatt, whom he considers his only real friend. TheGunfight at the O.K. Corral makes the brothers very unpopular in town as many citizens feel that they deliberately provoked the shootout. Virgil is ambushed and wounded, and Morgan is killed. In theVendetta Ride, Wyatt forms a posse with his friends to hunt down and take revenge against the remaining Cowboys.
Many years later, Wyatt and Josie mine for gold inAlaska. A young man on the same boat recognizes Wyatt and recounts a story in which Wyatt had saved the boy's uncle, "Tommy Behind-The-Deuce". Wyatt says to Josie, "Some people say it didn't happen that way", to which she responds, "Never mind them, Wyatt. It happened that way." Anepilogue states that Holliday died six years later in a hospital inGlenwood Springs, Colorado. Members of the Clanton gang continued to die mysteriously for years after Morgan's murder. Josie and Wyatt remain together for 47 years until Wyatt died at age 80 inLos Angeles.
Costner was originally involved with the filmTombstone, another film about Wyatt Earp, written byKevin Jarre ofGlory. However, Costner disagreed with Jarre over the focus of the film (he believed that the emphasis should have been on Wyatt Earp rather than the many characters in Jarre's script) and left the project, eventually teaming up with Kasdan to produce his own Wyatt Earp project. The film was also originally meant to be a six-hour miniseries until Kevin Costner joined the cast. Costner proceeded to use his then-considerable clout to convince most of the major studios to refuse to distribute the competing film, which affected casting on the rival project.[7]
Principal photography began on July 19 and ended on December 15, 1993.
| Wyatt Earp | |
|---|---|
 Cover art | |
| Soundtrack album by | |
| Released | 1994 |
| Label | Warner Bros. Records |
The score was composed byJames Newton Howard, conducted by Marty Paich with The Hollywood Recording Musicians Orchestra and released by Warner Bros. Records in 1994. It was later re-released in 2013 in an expanded edition by La-La Land.[8]
Wyatt Earp, released six months afterTombstone, grossed $56 million on a $63 million budget,[3][6] compared toTombstone's $73 million gross on a $25 million budget.[9] The film opened at number 4 at the US box office behindThe Lion King,Speed andWolf, grossing $7.5 million in its first weekend.[10] Internationally,Wyatt Earp was more successful grossing $31 million, compared toTombstone's $17 million, but this was not enough to recoup its budget, making it abox office bomb.[3]
Later Dennis Quaid said:
"I personally thought it was too long. But I'm also really proud of it."[11]
OnRotten Tomatoes the film has a score of 31%, based on 86 reviews, with an average rating of 5.4/10. The site's consensus states: "Easy to admire yet difficult to love,Wyatt Earp buries eye-catching direction and an impressive cast in an undisciplined and overlong story."[5] OnMetacritic, the film has a score of 47 out of 100 based on 20 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[12]
Roger Ebert of theChicago Sun-Times gave the film 2 out of 4 stars, saying "Wyatt Earp plays as if they tookTombstone and pumped it full of hot air. It involves many of the same characters and much of the same story, but little of the tension and drama. It's a rambling, unfocused biography of Wyatt Earp..., starting when he's a kid and following his development from an awkward would-be lawyer into a slick gunslinger. This is a long journey, in a three-hour film that needs better pacing."[13]
Todd McCarthy ofVariety praised the cast and production values, but remarked, "If you're going to ask an audience to sit through a three-hour, nine-minute rendition of an oft-told story, it would help to have a strong point of view on your material and an urgent reason to relate it. Such is not the case withWyatt Earp."[14] Similarly,Caryn James ofThe New York Times complimented the film's ambition and effort to portray a more human Earp, but still felt that "the film's literal-minded approach to the hero's dark soul is one of its terrible problems. 'Wyatt Earp' labors to turn this mythic figure into a complex man; instead it makes him a cardboard cutout and his story a creepingly slow one."[15]
Audiences surveyed byCinemaScore gave the film a grade "B+" on scale of A to F.[16]
| Award | Category | Nominee(s) | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Academy Awards[23] | Best Cinematography | Owen Roizman | Nominated |
| American Society of Cinematographers Awards[24] | Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases | Nominated | |
| Golden Raspberry Awards | Worst Picture | Kevin Costner,Lawrence Kasdan, andJim Wilson | Nominated |
| Worst Director | Lawrence Kasdan | Nominated | |
| Worst Actor | Kevin Costner | Won | |
| Worst Screen Combo | Kevin Costner and "any of his three wives" (Annabeth Gish,Joanna Going, andMare Winningham) | Nominated | |
| Worst Remake or Sequel | Kevin Costner, Lawrence Kasdan and Jim Wilson | Won | |
| International Film Music Critics Association Awards[25] | Best Archival Release of an Existing Score – Re-Release or Re-Recording | James Newton Howard, Dan Goldwasser, and Tim Grieving | Nominated |
| Spur Awards[26] | Best Drama Script | Dan Gordon and Lawrence Kasdan | Won |
| Turkish Film Critics Association Awards | Best Foreign Film | 18th Place | |
American Film Institute nominated the film inAFI's 100 Years of Film Scores[27]
| Films directed |
|
|---|---|
| Written only |
|
| Television |
|
| Related topics | |
