directed by George Cosmatos
Rated: R (violence, a silly love-conquers-all adulterous sub-plot–not for young children)
reviewed by Debra Murphy
As some of you know, my middle child, Luke, is "high-functioning" autistic. One of the interesting things about this condition is that Luke gets little "obsessions"–fierce interests in certain, often obscure, subjects that can last for months, even years. Around the time of Luke’s eighteenth birthday his obsessioon (or at least one of them) was 1990s Westerns–a subgenre which has never held much attraction for me, let me hasten to add.
Nonetheless, as is the Murphy custom, the birthday child got to choose the family movie that night, and in honor of Luke’s eighteenth we all sat down obediently to view, initially without much enthusiasm, Luke’s pick: the 1993 Western Tombstone starring Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp and Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday.
And oh my, though this is one of the most violent movies I have ever seen, did Kilmer make this excurision into a usually forgettable genre worth our familial time! There’s a really dreadful adulterous/romantic subplot between Earp and some actress played by Dana Delanay–every time the focus turned on that shtick the music went saccharine and the screenwriting hokey–but I won’t hold that against the movie; not when there’s Val Kilmer selling such delivery-dependent lines as "I’m your huckleberry," and one-upping a truly evil Johnny Ringo played to the mustaches by a surly Michael Biehn–man, I couldn’t wait to see that guy get plugged!–in an astounding and hilarious contest of gun play and boozy Latin.
The latter bit–the Latin, I mean–brings up a colorful aspect of the film that this Catholic found especially fun, i.e. all the religious imagery and biblical apocalyptic. In fact, if they’d only left out the actress, Tombstone might have turned out a sort of Apocalypse Now of Westerns.
Oh well, it was still half, or even two-thirds a great movie.
Here’s the great "Latin" dialogue between Holliday and Ringo, sure to warm any Catholic’s heart:
Doc: In vino veritas.
Ringo: Age quod agis.
Doc: Credat Judaeus Apella, non ego.
Ringo: Juventus stultorum magister.
Doc: In pace requiescat.
We must have watched that scene five times that night.
Which brings me to my final point: thank God for our Lukester and his little obsessions! It has not only given us the privilege of knowing a truly unique and remarkable individual, it has also introduced our family to all sorts of cool things we’d never have investigated otherwise…like Tombstone.