Tombstone (1993)

There's a moment in Tombstone where Val Kilmer's Doc Holliday, pale as a ghost, propped up against a bar, fixes someone with that hollow-eyed gaze and purrs "I'm your huckleberry." And you feel it. Not just as a cool line, not just as a bit of period flavour, but as a genuine statement of character. That's a dying man choosing to burn brightly rather than quietly fade out. It's one of the finest pieces of acting in any Western ever made, and if you think that's an overstatement, I'd politely suggest you watch it again.

Kilmer is the heart and the soul of this film, and I don't say that to shortchange Kurt Russell, who brings a real, weathered stillness to Wyatt Earp. Russell plays him as a man who's earned his peace, who wants nothing more than to lay down the gun and live quietly, and who gets dragged back into the bloodshed through loyalty, grief and stubbornness. It's a solid, grounded performance. But Kilmer operates on a different frequency entirely. He's magnetic in every single scene, swinging between razor wit and barely contained fury, between gentle affection and cold menace. The character is already half-dead from tuberculosis, and Kilmer plays it like a man who's made his peace with that and decided to spend whatever time he has left being absolutely magnificent. Every second of his screen time is earned.

The film around him is a handsome, propulsive Western that earns its reputation. The gunfight at the O.K. Corral is brilliantly staged. It's tense, messy and brief in the way real violence tends to be, and the weight of it carries through into what follows. The Arizona landscape looks stunning, all red rock and wide sky, and the film leans into the mythology of the Old West while not entirely pretending the violence comes without cost. The supporting cast is stacked. Sam Elliott does exactly what Sam Elliott does and does it beautifully. Michael Biehn is genuinely sinister as Johnny Ringo. Powers Boothe brings menace and swagger. Every face you see has personality behind it.

It's worth saying that Tombstone sits in a long tradition of great Westerns built around brotherhood and duty, and if you love it, I'd strongly recommend tracking down Rio Bravo, which covers similar thematic ground with a different kind of quiet confidence. And if Kurt Russell in tough-guy mode is your thing, I've had a brilliant time with him in Big Trouble in Little China as well, which is a very different beast but carries the same infectious sense of fun.

Where Tombstone stumbles, and it does stumble, is in the middle stretch. The film is just over two hours long, and there's a portion of that runtime where the revenge loop starts to repeat itself. Skirmish follows skirmish. The Cowboys menace, the Earps retaliate, and for a while you can feel the film spinning its wheels, relying on charm and attitude to carry scenes that don't quite pull their weight. It never falls apart and it never gets boring exactly, but it coasts a little when it should be pushing forward. Tighten that middle section and you might have a near-perfect film. As it stands, it's a very good one.

But "very good" in this genre, done at this level, is nothing to sniff at. The dialogue is quotable throughout, the action is crisp, and the central performances give the film real emotional stakes beneath all the swagger and gunsmoke. It's the kind of Western that reminds you why the genre endures, why we keep returning to dusty streets and men with impossible codes of honour and the idea that friendship is worth dying for.

Four stars. Epic, entertaining and endlessly quotable. Not quite flawless, but close enough to stand tall. A gunslinger's dream of a movie, and Doc Holliday alone is worth the price of admission twice over.

Rating: ★★★★  | Year: 1993  | Watched: 2025-09-28

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Watch in the UK
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More from George P. Cosmatos: Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) · Cobra (1986)
More with Kurt Russell: The Fox and the Hound (1981) · Bone Tomahawk (2015) · Big Trouble in Little China (1986) · Escape from New York (1981)
More from the 1990s: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · Blue (1993) · Cemetery Man (1994)
More western: The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) · Rio Bravo (1959) · Ride Lonesome (1959) · The Great Train Robbery (1903)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)