Dammit, dammit, dammit. I was really hoping to like this film. I've always had a soft spot for epic Westerns and Lawrence Kasdan's Wyatt Earp seemed like the perfect film to scratch that particular itch. A sprawling 3-hour biography of Wyatt Earp, it features a plethora of great actors like Gene Hackman, Dennis Quaid, Bill Pullman, and Kevin Costner. It's also heart-breakingly beautiful, featuring cinematography from Owen Roizman that is nothing short of stunning. And yet Wyatt Earp fails miserably. For starters, Kevin Costner delivers a woefully wooden performance. I know that Costner is a perennial punching bag when it comes to bad acting, but the man is capable of great performances. His turn as Wyatt Earp isn't one of them. Also, for such a long film Earp remains puzzlingly enigmatic, his motivations never becoming clear. This isn't a deliberate creative decision like Brad Pitt's off-kilter performance as Jesse James in Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007). We never understand Earp as a character because his character is never properly developed. Much of the film is spent trying to emotionally validate Earp's various romantic pursuits. And unforgivably, the film does almost nothing to develop the friendship between Earp and Doc Holliday, played by Dennis Quaid in a career-defining performance that is mostly wasted. They only have a handful of scenes together and we never quite understand how or why Holliday becomes so fanatically attached to Earp. Wyatt Earp is too long and unfocused for it to leave any lasting impact. And what a shame, too. It's such a pretty film.
5/10
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