FREE: The Quick And The Dead

The listing, The Quick And The Dead has ended.

Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, Gary Sinise, Leonardo DiCaprio. In this fresh look at the Wild West, a revenge-seeking female gunslinger enters a quick-draw contest. Director Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead) tries gamely to recapture the exotic mysteries of spaghetti Westerns in this stylish but empty film, which stars Sharon Stone as a stranger who comes to the town of Redemption in time for an annual shooting contest. Her real motivations for being there are the stuff that might have found their way into a film by Sergio Leone--in fact, much of this film is a pastiche of Leone's greatest hits, including A Fistful of Dollars and Once upon a Time in America--but one can't quite believe Stone in the role. Gene Hackman gives a predictably solid performance as the town tyrant, and Leonardo DiCaprio is good as a lucky young gunslinger who gets to kiss the heroine. But not even the cast can help this failed project. Raimi brings a lot of razzle-dazzle to his camera work, but it doesn't make the film any more substantial. Gene Hackman is great as the sadistic John Herod, he is even meaner than in Unforgiven. Russell Crowe gives a good performance as Cort, and Crowe is finally getting the attention that he deserves as a serious actor. Sharon Stone's role does not demand all that much of her and she does what is expected of her. Leonardo DiCaprio exudes the appropriate amount of cockiness as the young upstart gunslinger. There are some good minor roles in the film, including Lance Henriksen as Ace and Keith David as Cantrell, the man secretly hired by the oppressed townfolk to take out Herod. The most dramatic moment in the film comes when he faces Herod and the townspeople bend their heads in prayer for salvation only to be disappointed as Cantrell comes to a brutal end.