The Quick and the Dead (1995)

John Chard

6.0

May 19, 2019

Nice try from Raimi, but ultimately it creeps just above average. The Western is a tough genre to tackle in the modern age, more so when it's post Dances With Wolves and Unforgiven's masterclasses 101. But tackling both these challenges is nothing to the one which director Sam Raimi asks of the audience in his stab at the genre. A female gunslinger is here played by a Hollywood beauty, Sharon Stone, but she isn't right for the lead role. She obviously looks gorgeous and she broods and pouts better than most of her modern day peers, but she lacks a menacing streak, a bit of believable n…

CinemaSerf

6.0

Aug 27, 2023

Now I saw this in the cinema in 1995 and had somehow managed to completely forget all about it - until I saw it again just last week and realised why. It's not that it is awful, it's just that it is so very derivative and very, very dependant on Gene Hackman ("Herod") who walks a fine line between menace and ham in a none too convincing fashion. He is running a to-the-death gun slinging competition - almost like one of the chivalric jousts of old - with the winner having to face him in the final shoot-out for an huge poke. Sharon Stone ("Ellen") arrives in his dingy town just at the start of t…

Wuchak

7.0

Sep 18, 2024

**_Mythic Western about a quick-draw contest in a town with an all-star cast_** Sharon Stone stars as a grim, nonchalant woman who, curiously, enters a dueling contest in a remote Southwest desert town "ruled" by outlaw Herod (Gene Hackman). A pacifist preacher is forced by Herod to participate in the contest, but he ain't no conventional minister (Russell Crowe). Other notables include: Leonardo DiCaprio, Lance Henriksen, Tobin Bell, Keith David, Gary Sinise and Pat Hingle. "The Quick and the Dead" (1995) was co-produced by Stone and she was responsible for getting the youthful & skinny…