The Quick and the Dead (1995)

That was an excellent one.

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Sam Raimi does it again with this affectionate and entertaining take on the western genre. It's a light-hearted and simple film, comfortable to whizz along with a witty script delivered by an ensemble cast, and while you won't see anything new here, the wild west staples are delivered with relish and gusto. Made soon after ARMY OF DARKNESS, this is very much in the EVIL DEAD style, with all manner of camera tricks and transformations to mark it out as something standing separate from the rest.I always appreciate a good cast and here's a film that doesn't disappoint. As the heroine, Sharon Stone manages to be fairly engaging, which is unusual considering the rest of her filmography. Still, she's overshadowed by some excellent fellow cast members, including Russell Crowe in his first Hollywood film. What a choice! A youthful Leonardo DiCaprio manages to be fairly non-irritating playing "The Kid", and an excellent cast of stereotyped 'bad guy' actors fill out the nefarious roles.There's SAW villain Tobin Bell, trusty stalwart Keith David, good old Lance Henriksen as a sharp shooter and best of all Gene Hackman, lording it up as the arch nemesis who rules his town with an iron fist. Lots of familiar faces (like Gary Sinise and Pat Hingle) also pop up, making this enjoyable just for the cast. But the fun twists and turns in the plot, the various shoot-outs (never boring, despite being so plentiful), and the little touches like the hole in the shadow make this a genuinely enjoyable movie. Good work, Sam!

Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio and Gary Sinise star in Sam Raimi's 1995 western. This takes place in small town, Redemption and Stone (Basic Instinct) plays Ellen, a female gunslinger who is seeking revenge for her father's murder when she was a child. Hackman (Superman) plays Herod, the town's former outlaw turned mayor who was responsible. She enters in a gunfighting contest held by him and tries to face him. Crowe (Gladiator) plays Cort, a preacher who was once part of Herod's gang who helps Ellen, DiCaprio (Titanic) plays Kid, a young man who was raised by Herod who also befriends her and Sinise (Forrest Gump) plays Ellen's father who was a marshal. This is a good western with a good cast, Hackman is a great bad guy as usual and Alan Silvestri's score is also great. I recommend this.

A passion project for the lead actress and producer Sharon Stone, The Quick and the Dead is something of an oddity. A film of the 90s, where everything was all about masculinity, explosions and cigar-chomping heroes, it nevertheless features a female gunslinger as its main character and is honestly speaking more of a parody of westerns than an actual real deal. Certainly having Sam Raimi as director helped the latter point come into being.Still, it is a very fun movie to watch. Imagine Army of Darkness, only in western setting. Every single character is massively over the top, as is all the violence, making it into a source of comedy. The plot is rather simplistic, featuring the main character riding into town revenge in mind just as a gun duel contest is about to begin, but it is just deep enough to carry from start to finish. And really, the main points of this film are the characters and the parodying of older westerns, so the plot is just complex enough.What really saddens me and keeps this movie from being any better, is that they didn't go far enough, in my opinion. For example, Stone's character is certainly given a proper buildup to be a strong character in her own right, but then she simply fades into the background near the end of the movie and it comes down to two males dueling. Likewise most of the characters are introduced very interestingly, but few of their initial story lines ever go anywhere. I won't say that this ruins the film, because it's still entertaining enough, but it could have been better if the film makers had only taken proper advantage of what they had.Still, the film is definitely worth a watch if you've liked Raimi's other films and/or if you like strong female action heroes. Not the best example of either of those, but definitely above average in its own right.

Every review I read about this film dissed it and every review I read was written by men! This was a film about a woman protagonist and hero. Of course men don't like it! I just read another review on IMDb by a GUY who said the plot wasn't original. I've never seen or heard anything similar to a story about a little girl who was given a chance to save her Marshall father, who was about to be lynched by Hackman and his crew, by shooting the rope to free him and instead killed him because she didn't know how to handle a gun!! Could any person imagine the guilt a person would carry around if that happened to them? Leonardo DiCaprio had just finished filming Titanic and Russell Crowe was hardly new to feature films. One of my favorite westerns of his was 3:10 to Yuma, but that's another story.Basically, I'm sorry you guys hate it when testosterone isn't what wins the day in a good western, but real history tells the story of many women gunfighters who were as good or better than any man: Cattle Annie, Calamity Jane and many more.I admire Sharon Stone for a good story told with realism of the period. I happen to be a hobby historian about the old west and in real life, the good guys weren't always men and even when they were, they didn't always win, and those popular history paints as heroes weren't as good as people think they were, such as the Earp's and Doc Holiday.Yes, there are thousands of western movies with plots that are similar but The Quick and the Dead has a plot unlike any other I've ever seen and while I haven't seen all of them, I have seen most.