The Quick And The Dead

UK Release Date. 22 September 1995
Certification. 15
Running Time. 1 hour 48 mins
Director. Sam Raimi
Cast. Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Gene Hackman, Sharon Stone.
Rating. 38%

Review.

There seemed a period in the 1990s when filmmakers in Hollywood appeared to wish to revive the western. A genre renowned for panoramic vistas and endless sky. Films with little moral ambiguity, steeped in frontier justice and operatic confrontations. Films such as Dances With Wolves, Unforgiven, Tombstone, Wyatt Earp, Maverick, Lone Star, Ride With The Devil and even Back To The Future Part III tried to revive a genre pioneered by the likes of John Ford, Delmer Daves, Howard Hawks and John Sturges.

Sam Raimi's contribution to the 1990's renaissance was The Quick And The Dead, starring Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe and a teenage Leonardo DiCaprio fresh from The Basketball Diaries.

The Quick And The Dead storyline is far from unique. A mysterious, lone gunfighter arrives in the town of Redemption looking to wreak revenge on the man who killed her father. The twist - the lone gunfighter is female and the opportunity for retribution is through the town's annual quick-draw competition.

Sharon Stone plays Ellen, the aforementioned, enigmatic gunslinger who bears a remarkable similarity to Clint Eastwood's 'The Man With No Name' ('Joe', 'Manco' and 'Blondie'). Silent, stoic and brooding - complete with her own quirly - the female lead fails to connect with the audience.

What initially appears to be a reimagined traditional western quickly descends into something less meaningful. Just as Raimi's Evil Dead franchise invited knowing sniggers from the audience, The Quick And The Dead suffers from larger-than-life cartoonish levels of exaggerated action, more at home in the Looney Tunes back catalogue. "I'm the fastest gun north, south, east and west of the Pecos!" I genuinely wouldn't have been surprised if Yosemite Sam appeared on-screen as one of the quick-draw competitors.

The Quick And The Dead is a film that ultimately struggles to convey whether it is a homage to the classic western or a withering, tongue-in-cheek pastiche. Only Sam Raimi knows.