Gunfight at the O.K. Corral Film Review

This is a terrific Western. It almost doesn't matter if their names are Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. The two names that count here are Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in a casting coup. Two hard rock never subtle actors who bounce off each other like kids in the playground. They were in seven films together - my favorite being Seven Days in May. That is the main pleasure of this film - watching it become a Buddy Movie - certainly more love between them than their women in the film. John Sturges who also directed The Hour of the Gun some years later gives this a shot of male testosterone - all these men in their two cliques trying to kill each other. Sturges brings it to a slow boil - ends it at the O.K Corral - a highly fictional telling of it but wonderfully played out. After I think watching seven O.K Corrals I should be tired of it - but I never am - they all do it differently except for the iconic walk. At one end the killers are waiting for them, the good guys walking deliberately four abreast coming at them. And we know that at least that part was true. Gutsy bastards on both sides.

Everything in the film is done well - the framing is so perfect, lots of smaller players that we know, fine acting. Douglas brings Holliday down a notch or two from some other portrayals, as he basically plays Douglas with a cough and Lancaster basically plays Earp like Lancaster dressed in black like a funeral director. But these guys were giants back in the 1950s and 60s. And there was a reason for that though they may not play as well now. Only the corny singing theme song that narrates the film feels tacky now but back then Westerns had theme songs. This is a good place to end my little trip into the past with the Clantons all dead and our boys still alive.