Customer Reviews

Wyatt Earp

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

If the film Tombstone was a cheeseburger and fries, then Wyatt Earp is a nice thick ribeye. After an inexplicably long wait however, Wyatt Earp arrives on DVD in only a decent package at best. The picture's new digital transfer and the remastered 5.1 soundtrack are terrific. Two nice documentaries (albeit brief) are added as well as the trailer and the extra scenes from the expanded edition.

What are disappointments are the fact that the extra scenes were not incorporated in the film here (only accessable as an extra feature), no commentary from ANYONE, no animated menus, no biogrophies or filmogrophies. You can't really call this a special edition, especially after you compare this with Tombstone's double disc pack.

The cast (especially Dennis Quaid) is what makes this film great. Costner, who traditionally doesn't hold up strong playing legends certainly made one tough gunslinger and a VERY believable Wyatt Earp. With that moustache, hat, and cold stare, he sure was intimidating! While Tomstone's cast looked like actors playing cowboys, Wyatt Earp aims for realism and hits its mark dead on.

If you're a fan of this film, then this DVD is definitely worth getting. However, if you only collect DVDs with a lot of extra glitz, this will be a bit of a letdown.

Why wasn't the expanded VHS edition released on DVD??? Why were the excellent added scenes on that earlier version, which only made this great film all the more greater, put as "lifted scenes" here? Was this simply done to add more stuff to the special features menu? I don't know for sure if this was director Lawrence Kasdan's idea or not, but I got news for him and the folks at Warner Bros. who released this disappointing cut of the film: there ain't no better special feature than an improved version of a movie. If you don't believe me just ask all the sci-fi/fantasy fans who made the extended versions of THE LORD OF THE RINGS series top sellers. Oh well. Had this been the long version of WYATT EARP my rating would easily have been five stars. Peace, bro.

...after reading from other reviewers that this is not the full-length version as presented in the "Director's Cut" VHS-release, that those extra scenes are instead presented as extras on the second disc, I have to give this a pass and wait even longer to own one of my favourite westerns of all time on DVD; fortunately I still have my VHS Director's cut and a machine to play it on. :P

I have watched the director's cut so many times over the years that now when I watch the Theatrical release, it just seems incomplete and hacked. I keep waiting for certain beloved scenes to come up, but just don't, such as the scene with young Wyatt talking to his mother on the caravan as the family travels out to California.

If anyone from WB Home Video ever reads these reviews, please take these comments, and the comments of those similar to mine, to heart and release Kasdan's FULL-LENGTH Director's Cut on DVD!

There's a lot to like in Lawrence Kasdan's deconstruction of desperate western heroes in the epic WYATT EARP Two-Disc Special Edition (Warner).

This admirable, sometimes pretentious attempt to capture the complex, multi-faceted character of lawman and criminal Wyatt Earp (an uneven Kevin Costner) from Wichita to Dodge to the showdown at Tombstone's O.K. Corral does not always work but it sure looks great. Dennis Quaid is memorable as Earp's lethal pal Doc Holliday.

This is the 190 minute version. The twenty two additional minutes that are in the extended VHS version are presented separately here as "lifted scenes."

This 2-disc Special Edition DVD has some of the best features that I have ever seen on a DVD. This is most fitting given the fact that this is one of the very best Westerns that I have ever seen. The performances are excellent as are the direction and script. Best of all, unlike most movies about western legends like Wyatt Earp, this movie was made with a strict reliance on historical fact as it really is and not some tall tale. This is important because the likes of Wyatt Earp did all they can to create a mythology about how brave and noble they were to cover up for the fact that the real life Earp and friends were not all that much different from the bad guys that they fought against.

No doubt this movie is a western classic. I saw it years ago and loved it. I don't have anything negative to say about the movie itself. I almost picked up this 2 disc set until I learned it's a cut down or edited version. Why is the complete 212 min version only available on VHS ? That's just stupid. This is a great movie worthy of a director's cut edition maybe 3 disc set? I'd spend the extra cash on a deeper edition, until then I'll save my money. Please, please release the FULL version on DVD!

I was actually planning to but Wyatt Earp on DVD, but as I already have the Director's Cut on VHS video, I'll wait until the release of it on DVD. I believed this would be the "definitive" video release of Wyatt Earp. I'm quite disappointed!! I would rather have had the complete film on DVD than all of the extras!! Five-stars for the film, one-star for the short-sightedness of this DVD's content!! This is just as puzzling as why the restored version of John Wayne's The Alamo is not on DVD yet, either.

Kevin Costner doesn't get credit for being as good of an actor as he really is. It's nice to be able to see Warner Bros. release a film in the Western genre that, for once, doesn't have anything to do with Clint Eastwood. Val Kilmer's portrayal of the same character in "Tombstone" wasn't nearly as good as the one in this edition. I don't own the Digital Video Disc yet, so I'm not sure if I read something correctly which said that the actual three-hour feature is split onto two discs. I really hope it isn't.

If you enjoy this biography of Earp, it won't seem like three hours. I have ADD and I can still sit through it. This movie and Nixon are the only three hour movies that I can sit through.

Larger than life and with twice as many brothers, "Wyatt Earp" struts onto the DVD scene in a "Special Edition" that looks stunning but is less filling than one might have expected. This sprawling episodic tale begins with Wyatt as a child preparing to run away from home and join the Union army like his brothers Virgil and James. His father (Gene Hackman in a brief but powerful performance)catches him as he leaves and returns him back home. While Wyatt clearly yearns from the adventure he feels his brothers are experiencing, his father knows the truth about war and sets him straight.

Later, James and Virgil return home both exhausted and beat up from serving in the army. Their father has put on his traveling shoes and announces that the family will be moving West where there's opportunity for a lawyer and rich land is ready to be farmed.

Wyatt after many trials and tribulations ends up out west as a lawman. He manages to interest his brothers in coming out to help clean up Dodge City as well. We also get the thunderous conflict at the OK Corral as part of the conclusion of the film and witness a wonderful performance by Dennis Quaid as Doc Holliday. While the narrative is a bit too episodic and flawed, the film manages to retain one's interest throughout it's 190 minute running time due to Costner's unassuming portrayal as Wyatt. The real highlight, though, is Quaid as Doc capturing the fragile gunfighter as he fights the consumption that eats him alive.

With the long wait for "Wyatt Earp" to appear on DVD, one would have hoped to have a special edition with a commentary from director Lawrence Kasdan, star Costner and a look back at the film's reception when it was first released a decade ago. Unfortunately, the Warner Special Edition sticks to the basics for the most part: we get the original 190 minute theatrical cut of the film (sans the extended scenes that were added to the video version); two documentaries one "new" one that includes vintage interviews and the other a 1994 TV special; "lifted scenes", i.e., the footage included in the special video edition and the theatrical trailer.

Let's stark with the good stuff first. The stunning anamorphic widescreen transfer finely does justice to Kasdan's epic vision for this larger than life western biography. The remastered 5.1 sound captures just about every nuance from the original theatrical exhibition 10 years ago. Honestly, "Wyatt Earp" hasn't sounded this good since it was first released in 1994.

The negatives are few but worth noting. The documentaries are pretty good although a bit too brief. Perhaps Kasdan preferred his original theatrical cut to the extended version. That could explain why these sequences show up on the second disc and aren't integrated into the film. The lack of a commentary track is a big minus for the disc, though, as 1)Knowing how the film compared to the life of Earp would have been fascintating and 2) Kasdan's plans while shooting the film and comments would have been welcome.

With the recent deluxe release of "Open Range", I would have hoped for better from this release. On the other hand, great care was used in transferring this for DVD and the extras are roughly what "Unforgiven" received when it was re-released. Kudos to Warner for such a marvelous looking DVD although, again, more extras should have been included.

Saddle up, Costner fans -- "Wyatt Earp" has finally made it to DVD.

This epic Western biography bombed in theaters, and on video it's obvious why. The movie is long, long, long. It's best to watch this gigantic movie over a two-day period, stopping at the halfway point and picking up where you left off. "Wyatt Earp's" length is its biggest flaw.

I hated the movie the first time I saw it, on a pan-and-scan videotape, but DVD has restored the film's visual glory. Physically, this is a beautiful movie. Some of the shots are so lavishly stunning that we are reminded of the landscapes in "Dances With Wolves." This is the ultimate usefulness of the DVD format -- giving old(er) movies back their original beauty.

Costner is better than I remembered in the title role. He does a pretty good job of playing Wyatt from his early 20s to his 60s. He's especially good in the Dodge City sequences, dressed in black, teaching the Mastersons a thing or two about law enforcement. Is he as good as Henry Fonda in "My Darling Clementine?" Not quite, but this is not a bad performance by any stretch of the imagination.

The other actors are pretty good, too. Dennis Quaid is strong as Doc Holliday, though Doc really doesn't have that much to do and he has little onscreen chemistry with Costner (I didn't quite buy that these two men were great friends, mostly because Costner's Wyatt is so stand-offish.) Tom Sizemore, Michael Madsen and Bill Pullman also lend strong support. This being very much a guy movie, the female characters don't come off as well and are given scant notice, though Catherine O'Hara earns some praise as Allie Earp.

The movie's extreme length, though, almost kills it. "Wyatt Earp" could have used tighter editing and a stronger, more focused story. It does have some good action scenes, and the gunfight at the OK Corral is well handled. Unfortunately, the movie seems to be building toward nothing. I'm surprised it didn't carry us all the way to Wyatt's deathbed scene.

Still, I respect the movie; it's an impressive Western, and I'm glad to have it on DVD at last. And it's far from being the worst of Kevin Costner's movies.