I'm writing here starting with a clean slate: I watched the film without knowing who Wyatt Earp was, or that there was another film (Tombstone) about the same guy, which everyone has been comparing Wyatt Earp to. So, I'm not prejudiced and I'm not gonna make comparisons. It was just a boring film, with a nonsensical script that dragged on and on unnecessarily, occasionally introduced new characters who didn't have any meaningful contribution to the plot, and little to no sense of adventure and excitement. But the most annoying thing in the movie, I have to admit, is Kevin Costner himself. It seems that Mr Costner has a knack for playing the same character in every movie he stars in: a brooding, smile-less, miserable, cold-outside- but-with-a-heart-of- gold tough macho guy. Well, not such a good guy here, in my opinion. Just a cold-hearted bastard, as one of the characters calls him. But I digress. So, if the film wasn't unbearable enough, Costner's performance makes it even worse. Towards the end I had to fast- forward; I didn't miss anything important, and you wouldn't either, believe you me.

I am not a Kevin Costner fan and think he is the most one dimensional actor around. Sometimes his delivery in this movie struck me as amateurish. I thought he wasn't bad in DANCING WITH WOLVES but that was his best effort.I had to smile at the good guys wearing black and looking like morticians,(which they were in a sense). All that hot desert weather and they were in heat absorbing black.The scenes with wives and lovers were tedious and added little to the film.Frankly, any movie this long should be classified as epic, and this one certainly did not fall into that category. I can think of a good handful of westerns without much effort, superior to this one.

Kevin Costner can Pass as a Movie Star, once in awhile, but Simply does not have the Depth as an Actor to Pull Off this Heavy Study of the Western Icon. Especially when the Script takes Over Three Hours to put On Screen, the Length and Microscopic Details that Focus on the Life of Wyatt Earp ends up Revealing itself as another Kevin Costner Vanity Project.He is a Much Better Fit in "Open Range" (2003) having Grown Out of His Self Aggrandizement and His Film Projects in the Later Years show a Humble Restraint. Lessons Learned.Mediocre and Inconsistent Director Lawrence Kasdan must take Equal Blame for this Elongated, Episodic Epic. It's Not a Bad Film, but Only Slightly Above Average. Because the Better Parts (the Cinematography, and some good B Actors) are Intruded Upon by way too Many side Stories and a Bloated, Wordy Script that Keeps making the same Points, Over and Over.Overall, it's an Obese Film that seems to Never get any Momentum and even when it Manages some Motion, it is Reined In and Slowed Down by rather Boring and Unwelcome Scenes. The Movie Ends a Number of Times and the Train Sequence in one of the Endings is so Mishandled and Unremarkable as to be Anti-Climactic and Nearly Incomprehensible.Worth a Watch for Die-Hard Western Fans, but Others are Not Likely to be Impressed and may have Trouble making it to One of the Endings.

It's a well known cliché of Hollywood that they tend to release things in twos. Remember Deep Impact and Armageddon hitting at about the same time? How about Volcano and Dante's Peak? Red Planet and Mission to Mars (OK, no one remembers that one). Well in 1994 there were two films made looking at the life of famous lawman Wyatt Earp. The first, George P Cosmatos' Tombstone, looked only at Earp's time spent in the city of the title, focusing on the events leading up to and following the Showdown at the OK Corral. This film, a labour of love from Lawrence Kasdan, fashions Earp's life into an epic story of love and the binds of family in a lawless land.There is much to admire about the first half of the film, the part of me that is still a young boy who grew up watching John Wayne westerns with his father loves the shots of a herd of wild Buffalo, row after row of corn fields, cowboys riding on horseback through parched desert, and saloon shootouts all happening to a suitably grandiose soundtrack. This part of the film is pure western film making. It's nice to see Earp (Kevin Costner) interact with his father (Gene Hackman), see him go from a young law student who "never killed anyone" to a widower horse thief on the lam who bumps into the Masterson brothers, Ed (Bill Pullman) and Bat (Tom Sizemore) while hunting Buffalo. We see him work as a card dealer for his brother James (David Andrews) and then unwittingly become a lawman after taking down a gun toting drunk. It's kind of cool to meet his other brothers Morgan (Linden Ashby) and Virgil (Michael Madsen), but around now, we are starting to get weighed down by too many characters. I'm still on board as we see Earp get banished from Dodge City and becomes a bounty hunter, meeting Doc Holliday (Dennis Quaid-very good) and then returning to Dodge City with his brothers to clean it up after the Sheriff is killed.And this is really where you should turn it off and watch Cosmatos's film. In the second half, Kasdan gets bogged down trying to maneuver around far too many characters, which is further exacerbated by placing Earp into a love triangle that takes up far too much time and focus, just as the movie is headed towards the climactic showdown at the OK Corral. Following said showdown, things continue to go fairly slowly, we get yet more time donated to Earp's love life while there are far more interesting things going on. From there it's a slog to the finish line, where we get a great flashback scene of Earp talking down a lynch mob. These are the scenes we want to see, not a girl drinking herself to death because her common law husband is sleeping with a prettier woman. Cosmatos was able to convey this without using up as much screen time.It's a shame the film get bogged down in its second half because Costner, Quaid, Sizemore, Hackman, Cinematographer Owen Roizman, and Composer James Newton Howard are all up for this and in fine form. Ultimately though, the film suffers from having too many characters, too much of a bland ,love triangle and being in the shadow of the more action oriented Tombstone, which took a more economical look at the same events. For its first half however, Wyatt Earp is both gorgeous to look at and an entertaining origin story of one of the most heavily mythologized figures of the American Wild West. Costner gives us an Earp that, if not capturing what the actual man was like, captures what he should have been like, while Quaid is not as memorable as Kilmer, but still excellent as Holliday.Wyatt Earp is something of a missed opportunity due to a weak second half, but is far from worthless. Helpfully on the DVD release I own, the first disc ends right when Earp cleans up Dodge City. For viewers this is a pretty good time to take it out and watch Cosmatos' Tombstone instead of disc 2. As a matter of fact, I may do that right now...