Tombstone

The film carries George P. Cosmatos’s name, yet who actually directed it is still disputed. Kevin Jarre wrote the script and was to direct as well, but fell behind schedule and was removed about a month into shooting, with Cosmatos brought in to replace him. Kurt Russell told True West in 2006 that he handed Cosmatos a shot list every night; Val Kilmer supports that account, while Michael Biehn says Russell never directed him. Russell also worked with producer James Jacks to cut subplots out of Jarre’s sprawling script and push the weight onto the friendship between Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. The famous gunfight is over around the midpoint, and what follows is effectively a second film, a vendetta ride. The real event was roughly 30 shots in about 30 seconds, and it happened not at the O.K. Corral but in a narrow lot on Fremont Street beside C.S. Fly’s photography studio. The cast is large enough that many supporting figures get two or three scenes each. Every moustache is genuine except Jon Tenney’s Sheriff Behan. A good fit if you came for Kilmer’s genteel Southern drawl as Holliday and for the moment history hardens into legend. Not for viewers who want the lawmen’s cause questioned; the film picks its side in the first reel.