The Quick and the Dead (1995) TriStar/Western RT: 108 minutes Rated R (western violence, language, some sexual material) Director: Sam Raimi Screenplay: Simon Moore Music: Alan Silvestri Cinematography: Dante Spinotti Release date: February 10, 1995 (US) Cast: Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobin Bell, Roberts Blossom, Kevin Conway, Keith David, Lance Henriksen, Pat Hingle, Gary Sinise, Mark Boone Junior, Olivia Burnette, Fay Masterson, Raynor Scheine, Woody Strode, Jerry Swindall, Scott Spiegel, Jonothon Gill, Sven-Ole Thorsen, Lennie Loftin, Stacey Ramsower. Box Office: $18.6M (US)/$47M (World)
Rating: ***
Sharon Stone stars as The Woman with No Name in The Quick and the Dead, a stylish western from Evil Dead creator Sam Raimi. Hard as she tries, Stone can’t fill Clint Eastwood’s boots. Nobody can. The man is an American icon. Clint, there is no substitute.
You can see the influences of Sergio Leone throughout The Quick and the Dead from close-up shots of characters’ squinting eyes before a shootout to faint echoes of Ennio Morricone’s rich scores for Leone’s iconic spaghetti westerns. At the same time, it has Raimi’s signature all over it with the kinetic shaky-cam shots. Fans of the genre will also notice its kinship to another classic oater, High Noon (1952), with repeated shots of the town clock tower counting down the seconds to the many showdowns that take place in the corrupt town of Redemption.
The plot, such as it is, centers on a gunfight competition held every year by Herod (Hackman, Unforgiven), the rich a**hole in charge of everything in Redemption. The rules are simple. All entrants must fight at least once a day. Anybody can challenge anybody. No challenge can be refused. The fight continues until one man is down. The winner of the whole thing is the last man (or woman) standing. “The Lady” (that’s Stone) rides into town to take part. She says she’s only in it for the prize money. What she’s really after is revenge. She has a personal grudge to settle with Herod.
The other players include “The Kid” (DiCaprio, Titanic), a cocky young gunfighter who claims to be the illegitimate son of Herod; Ace (Henriksen, Aliens), a braggart who’s never without his deck of cards; Sgt. Cantrell (David, They Live), a gunman-for-hire brought in to deal with Herod and Cort (Crowe, L.A. Confidential), a former outlaw (and member of Herod’s old gang) who renounced violence and reinvented himself as a preacher. He’s entered into the competition forcibly because Herod wants to make him revert to his old ways.
Basically, The Quick and the Dead is a series of gunfights in which characters are eliminated one by one until only the main players are left standing. In between, we get scenes of The Lady glowering at Herod while puffing away on a thin cigar and Herod proving again and again what a bastard he is. We also get a cool supporting cast that includes Roberts Blossom (Home Alone), Kevin Conway (The Funhouse), Pat Hingle (Sudden Impact), Gary Sinise (Forrest Gump), Tobin Bell (the Saw movies), Sven-Ole Thorsen (Conan the Barbarian), Mark Boone Junior (Batman Begins), Olivia Burnette (Planes, Trains and Automobiles) and the late Woody Strode (Once Upon a Time in the West) in his final role.
After a string of bad movies (Sliver, Intersection and The Specialist), Stone redeems herself somewhat in The Quick and the Dead. That is to say, she doesn’t give a bad performance. It’s not great either. She doesn’t really stand tall in the saddle, but she can handle a six-shooter with the best of them. Her character starts out taciturn while fractured flashbacks reveal what Herod did to her in the past. Unfortunately, Raimi sees fit to provide exposition with a tearful scene in the town cemetery. If he’s going for an Eastwood-Leone thing, it would have been better to wait until the end for the big reveal. The movie lacks the haunting quality of High Plains Drifter, another Clint movie it seems to be paying homage to.
Hackman is wicked fun as the stereotypical western villain, a slimeball always surrounded by armed henchmen. What’s great about his performance is how knowing it is. He’s fully aware of how silly the whole thing is and runs with it. DiCaprio does decently as the overconfident Kid, a youngster who’s both quick on the draw and quick with his mouth. Crowe, in an early role, does a nice job as the former outlaw looking for redemption for his sins. What better place to find it than….. are you kidding?
There is some amazing cinematography courtesy of Dante Spinotti (Hudson Hawk). My favorite is when one guy gets shot clean through the head and you can see the main street through the hole. The score by Alan Silvestri is okay. The material calls for something more Morricone-like. That’s what I would have preferred anyway.
All in all, The Quick and the Dead is a good cowboy movie with a feminist slant. It serves up plenty of gunfight action and a standard story made fresh by Raimi’s stylistic touches. Stone definitely isn’t an icon on the level of Clint Eastwood, but who is?
