Stealth Entertainment: The Quick and the Dead
By Scott Lumley
November 13, 2008
None of it makes a lick of sense, especially in the age of Mythbusters and Discovery Channel, but despite the horrible performances and the completely unbelievable gunfights, this is just an entertaining film to watch. I credit the cinematographer and the director (Sam Raimi) in this case, as it appears early on that they knew this film was going to be terrible, so they just rolled with it and tried to make it more than the sum of its parts. And to be honest, they really did succeed.
The plot in this film is pretty much nonexistent. It's a revenge story - that much is obvious - but as the movie rolls along and you see why Lady is out for blood, you can't help but wince. It's a cruel, cold moment that the child actor playing a younger Lady did quite well. Lady takes advantage of a gunfighter's tournament run every year in the town that Herod rules with an iron fist and enters so she can get a shot at killing Herod. When she arrives, she isn't deemed much of a threat by the pack of gunfighters, killers, lunatics, preachers and Swedes. (Yes, I said Swedes. You don't think they had guns in Sweden?)
While Lady is angling to find a way into the tournament, Herod has his pack of bandits kidnap Cort, a former accomplice and bandit who used to ride with Herod. Cort has forsaken his gunslinging ways and is trying to redeem himself by working as a preacher. Herod is offended by Cort's transformation, because if Cort feels he doesn't have to be a killer, then maybe what Herod is doing is wrong. Herod tries to prove his point by thrusting the kidnapped Cort into the tournament, hoping that by forcing Herond to kill, he can prove his "once a killer, always a killer" theory.
And the tournament itself is just a great plot device for this movie. Nothing builds up the intimidation factor of a good guy or a bad guy by having them kill numerous, nameless yet colorful bad guys as they work their way through the ranks of the tourney. By the time the final confrontation rolls around, both Herod and Cort seem practically invincible.
The ending is almost ruined by a cheesy little twist near the end, and watching Lady stride down the street yet again dressed like a cowgirl fantasy in a '90s hair band video will very nearly ruin the whole thing for you. However, it's not the ending that you'll watch to enjoy in this film. It will be Hackman playing Herod like a complete bastard. It's the beautiful job that Dante Spinotti does with his camerawork. It's the fleshed out and colorful thugs who are slaughtered wholesale during the tournament. It's any number of little things that provide great entertainment in this film.
The Quick and the Dead is a guilty pleasure. It's a borderline terrible film with great moments that was shot by a really talented cinematographer. If anybody competent had been cast in Sharon Stone's role, this film could have gone an entirely different direction. But she was cast in it, so we're stuck with what we have, which is a pile of great moments cobbled together in an otherwise terrible movie.
Go watch it, you'll see what I mean. There are literally flashes of brilliance all over the place in the Quick and the Dead, you just have to ignore Sharon Stone a lot to see them.
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