The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • 96

it. Sprawling, aimless piofl bushivacEss ITyatt Earp' By Jay Boyar if I I I SENTINEL MOVIE CRITIC and commercial disappointment. A certain modern ambivalence creeps in around the edges of Wyatt Earp, as does a bit of self-deprecating humor. But unlike Silverado, the new movie is plainly an attempt to You can bet your best cowboy boots that Hollywood will never make a sequel to Heaven's Gate, the disastrous western REVIEW PHOTOWARNER BROS. Kevin Costner plays the title role in 'Wyatt which tries to summon the Old West's mythic spirit but ends up a shambles.

summon the mythic spirit of the Old West. The filmmakers really lay it on thick: From James Newton Howard's fanfare-infested musical score to the calendar-art cinematography of Owen Roizman, everyone does his level best (or worst) to live up to the natural grandeur of the sprawling western vistas they keep shoving at us. It's the sprawling plot, however, that bush epic whose famous failure caused the collapse of United Artists in the early 80s. But if Wyatt Earp isn't quite Heaven's Other Gate, it's as close as anyone's likely to get to repeating that classic horse-opera folly. In terms of sheer length, the new three-hour, 10-min-ute movie is in the same league as Heaven's Gate, which runs somewhere between two and Wyatt Earp' Cast: Kevin Costner, Dennis Quaid, Gene Hackman.

Director: Lawrence Kasdan. Screenwriters: Dan Gordon, Lawrence Kasdan. Cinematographer: Owen Roizman. Music: James Newton Howard. Running time: 3 hours, 10 minutes.

Industry rating: PG-13 (parents strongly cautioned). Parents' guide: Extreme violence, adult themes, language. Reviewing key: excellent, good, average, poor, awful Gordon (Passenger 57) seem determined to outdo the many previous big-screen attempts to tell the story of the famous law-man-cum-outlaw including last year's Tombstone. And they try to pull their ungainly production together with a big, worthy theme'. "Remember this all of you," intones Wyatt's father, like some Old Testament prophet.

"Nothing counts as much as blood. The rest are just strangers." But this message tends to get lost in the plot's details, which are, at least in part, based in fact and therefore resistant to such generalizations. As things turn out, Wyatt's buddies, like Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson, are as reliable as Wyatt's brothers. So are many of the women with whom our hero and his brothers become involved women who don't count as "blood" as far as Wyatt is concerned. It could be argued, I suppose, that that is precisely the point that Wyatt and his father have the wrong idea about the value of love and friendship vs.

blood ties. But isn't that, well, sort of obvious? Other potential themes crop up, only to be frittered away. Much is made, for example, about the question of whether Wyatt is too violent in the way he enforces the law. But he isn't portrayed that way on the job. And because those who oppose his methods are not developed as characters, the objections just seem silly.

Another major plot point involves Wyatt's drinking problem, which causes him to swear off liquor. Late in the film, after a terrible setback, he turns to the bottle again over the heartfelt objections of his buddy Doc. But, incredibly, nothing whatsoever results from Wyatt's decision to take that drink which kind of made me want to take one myself. And the movie's kitsch-classic visual style notwithstanding, Kasdan is an amateur when it comes to filming the big action sequences that are at the heart of the western form. In Wyatt Earp, the action is almost always stiffly or confusingly staged.

In earlier westerns, you could tell everything you needed to know about a character by the color of his hat. But in Wyatt Earp, it's the hairstyle that makes the cowpoke. Kevin Costner one of America's finest hair actors starts out sunnily clean-cut with a nice, optimistic do. But his Wyatt ends up with a nasty mustache and his mane slicked back in menace. Too much angst equals too much mousse, or so I gather.

As for the supporting cast, Gene Hackman, Michael Mad-sen, Catherine O'Hara, Isabella Rossellini, JoBeth Williams, Jeff Fahey, Mark Harmon, Bill Pullman, Tom Sizemore, Mare Winningham, Annabeth Gish and Joanna Going are all more or less crushed by the weight of the movie's epic intentions. One sole survivor is Dennis Quaid. As the tubercular Doc Holliday, he steals the show much as Val Kilmer, who played Doc in Tombstone, stole that show. Quaid's comically florid approach to the character seems to have been structured in such a way as to include the full force of Doc's hacking cough, without allowing that cough to dominate the performance. Not that the actor's funny voice and fancy footwork can save Wyatt Earp, which is otherwise lame indeed.

If this movie were a horse, you'd probably have to shoot it whacks the picture. Occasional scenes work on their own, like the one in which Wyatt pulls an amusing surprise move in his first barroom fight. But the overall effect of this aimless pastiche is like watching a Gunsmoke reunion show with big scenes from the series' 20-year run simply strung together. It's a shambles. Kasdan and co-writer Dan four hours depending upon which version you're watching all of which seem to last forever.

It is not necessarily a compliment to say that Wyatt Earp (which opens today) seems slightly shorter than eternity. This is the second western to team Kevin Costner (who has the title role here) with direc-torco-writer Lawrence Kasdan. Back in 1985, their flip, modern Silverado was both a critical Legend of Wyatt Earp is story directors love to toll By Jane Sumner Earp, says less than a minute). On screen here, it takes six. A sweet-faced Dennis Hopper OAUAS MORNING NEWS plays Billy Clanton; Burt Lancaster is Earp.

Cheyenne Autumn, 1964: British film scholar Leslie Halli well called James Stewart's comic turn as Wv- 1 ed by an ailing John Ford. Hour of the Gun, 1967: Begins with events at the O.K. Corral and follows the famous lawman on a cold-blooded vendetta. Maverick star James Garner plays Wyatt Earp, who bonds with witty gunfighter Doc Holliday (Jason Robards Jr.) to find his brothers' killers. Jon Voight, two years away from Midnight Cowboy, is bad guy Curly Bill Brocius.

Tombstone, 1993: Behind a mustache as big as a gerbil, the staunch Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell) lets caustic, charismatic, consumptive Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer) run away with the film. The actors' full-length horseman's dusters could have held their own shootout. until the O.K. Corral shootout was staged in five parts at the end of the last season. Al "Lash" LaRue, a whip-snapping cowboy hero in the '40s, played Sheriff Johnny Behan in 1959.

Hugh O'Brian was Earp. (The show is being resurrected by CBS for a July 2 special, Wyatt Earp: Return to Tombstone). Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, 1957: Directed by John Sturges on location in Tombstone, Tucson and Phoenix. In real life, the gun battle between the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday (Kirk Douglas) against the McLowery and Clanton brothers and Billy Clairborne is supposed to have lasted two or three minutes.

(Dan, Gordon, "screenwriter of the new Wyatt Frame Johnson, a cowboy who pins on a badge and cleans up Tombstone before riding out of town. Remade in 1940 and 1953 with diminishing result. kMy Darling Clementine, 1946: One of the best of John Ford's 54 Westerns is his homage to Wyatt Earp, who once told the director about the O.K. Corral gunfight. Shot at Ford's favorite location in Monument Valley in northern Arizona (Tombstone is in the south).

Except for a few discrepancies, the script adheres to facts. Henry Fonda plays Earp. The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, 1955-1961, ABC-TV: In the third season, Doc Holliday (Douglas Fowley) 'showed upl and hung arourid Western heroes come and go, but no figure from the Old West has been resurrected as often as Wyatt Earp, the lawyer turned lawman who became an American legend following the infamous gun battle at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Ariz. Here's a look at some big-and small-screen Earp stories through the years.

Those available on video are marked with a star. Law and Order, 1931: This serious fictionalization of Wyatt Earp's exploits was co-scripted by John Huston. In it, Huston's father," Waif ef, Tplays' att Earp "irrel- Lancaster evant and off-key." The marshal and Doc Holliday (Arthur Kennedy) join in half-hearted pursuit of the doomed, noble Cheyenne en route to their homeland in the 1860s. Direct-'.