Interesting film but you really have to leave reality behind. Just a couple observations: Apparently Bill had the same hat most of his life and it never got dirty. He never missed his target. Kind of weird that the movie jumps back and forth between grainy bland and white and color. It seems that the city of Deadwood only allowed the most attractive women in the west to live there. People who think these women were typical should check out come actual photos from that period.

Out of every movie i have ever seen based on a legendary old west figure this movie was the largest pile of horse s**T i have ever seen.There is not 1/100 of fact base in this film i have spent 25 years of my life researching legendary western figures from Wyatt Earp to the back shooter Pat Garret and believe me they have made some stinkers but this is no doubt the worst pile of lies and misleads i ever saw. I WISH THERE WAS A RATING LESS THEN 1 BECAUSE THIS MOVIE WOULD RATE A - 10.Not to mention very bad acting from second rate actors.Walter Hill directed my favorite movie of all times the 1979 cult classic THE WARRIORS {in which he also used James Remar }so i expected better from him.This movie is a disgrace to a otherwise great director.

Most reviews seem to look at this through the prism of "Deadwood," which seems unfair as the elongated TV format allows for far more character development. So to point out that the characters in "Wild Bill" aren't as-- well, you get the picture. Viewed alone, the movie deserves praise for performance, set design, a sense of period dialogue and historical accuracy in visual recreations. Yes, WB really did wear Navy Colts backwards, cavalry-style, in a red sash; yes, he did have greasy lanks of hair and wear a big floppy hat, a thick tie and a vest that didn't match his jacket which didn't match his pants. And for about an hour, I think the movie is pretty amusing. But when it sinks into Deadwood over its last hour, it appears to use too much of the stagey dialogue of one of its sources, a play by someone named Thomas Babe. At this point, it pretty much abandons history which is bad enough, but also cinematic fluency, of which Hill is a master: it becomes static, talky, dreary, and completely loses its momentum. And someone--Babe?--made the decision to give the McCall-Hickcock dynamic an Oedipal overtone--he's the "son" of a woman once loved , then abandoned, by Hickcock. This is an attempt at coherency, to bring the murder into some sort of classic framework. Yeah, swell, however: McCall was much older, a buffalo hunter who'd lost dough to Wild Bill the night before. He didn't stand for the abused son, he stood for the randomness of frontier violence, where booze, pride, stupidity and a culture of pointless aggression could easily spell an ambush murder like McCall's. THAT, to me, would not only have been more accurate, but more fluent and a better movie.

Wild Bill is a dark, moody Western about the last days of legendary lawman James Butler Hickock that sometimes shows off its true colors (by that, I mean its riveting action sequences, not its appearance) but suffers from a disorganized screenplay, some dull characters, an imperfect running time, and while it's not a bad Western, it's not a great one either.Jeff Bridges gives a noteworthy performance as Wild Bill, John Hurt gives most of the movie's seldom-seen charisma as his friend Charley Prince (I'm not sure if this character is real or not) and then there is a truly great performance by Ellen Barkin as frontierswoman Calamity Jane. In shorter, laconic terms, Wild Bill boasts a great cast and some witty dialogue. Director Walter Hill (who also directed The Long Riders (1980) with the Carradine brothers) does a phenomenal job with the action scenes as well. The killings in this film look harsh and brutal as they in deed were. And the violence is not overdone to the point where it becomes depressing.But like I mentioned earlier, the story is disorganized. There were too many black-and-white flashback scenes, which I've seen many done better many times before in other films, that dragged on and slowed the movie down for me. John Hurt's narration was sometimes effective, sometimes overdrawn. And the pacing was in need of a revision. I'm sure the filmmakers could have worked it out a different way to tell the past of the characters without constantly using flashbacks and could have removed some additional scenes that went into and out of nowhere. Because they unfortunately are the movie's major flaws. They slow it down.Wild Bill, again is not necessarily a bad film. I did mildly enjoy it at times, but it is a very dark motion picture without much point behind itself. The action scenes are good, the acting is great, and the general atmosphere of a dark time in a weary man's life is convincing. But ultimately, Wild Bill is just too slow and kind of a disappointment.