Sometimes a film that you recognize as so-so while you are watching it, just
hits you right. There is so much wrong with this film and yet I managed to
enjoy every minute of it. It is considered one of Blake Edward's biggest
failures - both critically and at the box-office - and it is easy to see
why. It can't seem to make up its mind as to what it wants to be and it strolls
along contentedly, aimlessly and yet predictably. You know where it will
be going but that is what you want with a film like this. No surprises please.
This is not Chinatown - just a pleasant genial nostalgic murder mystery that
takes place in Hollywood in 1929. Which would have surprised the real-life
Wyatt Earp as he had died earlier in the year at 80 years old. The film is
a buddy noir comedy western but is too glossy for both noir and western.
The plot makes little sense, people keep showing up to save the day when
there is no way they could know to be there, some of the dialogue is much
too modern and are we supposed to believe that Tom Mix - the biggest western
star of the Silents - and legendary Wyatt Earp of the O.K. Corral were friends.
Kind of silly, Nice idea but come on.
Oh. They were in real life. In fact, they were very good friends and Mix
and another big Western star of the period William S. Hart were the pall
bearers at his funeral. Earp had moved to Los Angeles years before and often
worked as a technical advisor to movies and became good friends with all
the western actors. The funny thing is that in the film everyone is filled
with awe when they find out he is Wyatt Earp but in truth Earp was basically
unknown to the public until a biography came out in 1931 by Stuart Lake.
After the popularity of the book a number of films were made - usually focusing
on his showdown with his brothers against the Clanton's at the O.K. Corral.
But Earp was dead by then.
The main strength of the film is James Garner as Earp. He really brings a
tough gruff dignity to the character, and he overshadows everyone else on
the screen. He had had some practice playing Wyatt Earp in the 1967 film
Hour of the Gun. Bruce Willis plays Tom Mix with a cocky light flamboyant
touch and for the most part he hands over the film to Garner. Of course,
at the time he was best known for the TV show Moonlighting and had just been
in Edward's Blind Date which did quite well at the box office. But it was
later in this same year that Die Hard came out and turned him into a huge
action star. I would guess that if this was made a few months later, he would
have been getting most of the screen time.
Mix is making a film about Wyatt Earp at the behest of the studio owner Alfie
Alperin played with sleazy malice by Malcolm McDowell. In truth, Earp had
been trying to interest the studios in a film about him for years but none
of them were interested. Alfie hires Earp as an advisor and Earp and Mix
hit it off right away. Mix in his spotless white cowboy outfit and Earp dressed
like a banker. The wife of Alperin (Patricia Hodge) turns out to have been
an old lover of Earp's and asks him to look for her son (Dermot Mulroney)
who is on a drunken bender. They find him - in the apartment of a murdered
woman who runs a bordello where all the girls look like famous movie stars.
They try and protect him but corrupt cops, gangsters and Alperin's sister
who resembles a hissing cobra are all mixed into it. In the film also is
Mariel Hemingway as the daughter of the dead woman and bed mate of Earp ("I'm
old enough to be your father", "You're old enough to be my grandfather but
I need someone tonight", "Ok"), Kathleen Quinlin, Jennifer Edwards - daughter
of Blake - as the rabid sister, M. Emmet Walsh as the corrupt head of security,
Richard Bradford as the corrupt cop and Joe Dallesandro as the gangster.
Good group of actors.
