The Quick and the Dead (1995)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Ellen	Sharon Stone	½
Herod	Gene Hackman	½
Cort	Russell Crowe
Kid	Leonardo DiCaprio
Dog Kelly	Tobin Bell
Doc Wallace	Roberts Blossom
Euguene Dred	Kevin Conway	-
Sgt. Cantrell	Keith David	½
Ace Hanlon	Lance Henriksen	½
Horace the Bartender	Pat Hingle	-
Marshall	Gary Sinise	-
Scars	Mark Boone Junior	-
Katie	Olivia Burnette	½
Mattie Silk	Fay Masterson	-
Ratsy	Raynor Scheine
Charlie Moonlight	Woody Strode	-

Review

Sam Raimi rounded up a bunch of Western genre archetypes for a big, emblematic last-man-standing quick-draw competition in The Quick and the Dead. Or rather, they were rounded up by star and co-producer Sharon Stone, who insisted on giving Russell Crowe his first American starring role and Leonardo DiCaprio his first love scene of sorts. The film starts out as an homage to the revisionist sub-genre before gradually turning into a spoof in the mould of Raimi's Evil Dead films. Predictably, the larger-than-life characters clash in various ways, but there's an unappealing disconnect between the actors' approach: some play their parts straight, others go for excess – and then there is Stone, who doesn't quite seem to have the mettle to do either. There's little doubt that Raimi's vision here is towards more excess, but his buffoonic antics kill of the film. He tries to parody the parodic, which is hard to do. The Spaghetti Western genre is already a revisionist comment on life in the west; there was no need for him to make a live-action cartoon about it. At least not one with as little inventiveness as this. A young and beautiful Leonardo DiCaprio gives the film its only strain of vitality. And Gene Hackman's bad-guy could have been effective in another movie. The same can be said of the basic premise, which is what gives the film its occasional sprinkles of fun.