‘Tombstone,’ at 30, is still your huckleberry

Val Kilmer gave his best-ever performance in George P. Cosmatos’ 1993 film, part of an unlikely boom in Westerns

In the early 1990s, there was an unlikely Hollywood boom in the Western genre- the last that has happened to date, unless you count the many streaming Yellowstone spinoffs. 

Dances With Wolves, of course, won Best Picture in 1990, while City Slickers, a Western comedy, was a massive hit in 1991. After Young Guns II, also in 1990, provided a relatively shallow look at multi-hero Western myth, Clint Eastwood’s 1992 Unforgiven was a groundbreaking revisionist take on the genre, from one of its best-known practitioners. That, too, went on to sweep the Oscars. 

In the following two years, there arrived a pair of cinematic treatments of the Wyatt Earp legend. One, 1994’s Wyatt Earp, is remembered very little, despite starring A-lister of the time Kevin Costner. The one that arrived six months earlier? That was 1993’s Tombstone, which everybody remembers. 

(Costner, fresh off his Dances With Wolves Oscars, was originally involved with Tombstone, before clashing with writer Kevin Jarre, who at that point was slated to direct, and left to set up his own Earp project. It was a familiar story with Costner projects throughout the ‘90s- one that continues today.) 

Tombstone arrived at Christmas in 1993, 30 years ago this week. Directed by George P. Cosmatos — who replaced Jarre shortly into filming — Tombstone was a rollicking treatment of the Wyatt Earp/Doc Holliday legend, starring Kurt Russell as Earp, and Sam Elliott and Bill Paxton as his brothers. (And yes, Russell is said to have named his actor son, Wyatt Russell, after his character.) 

The plot mostly concerns Wyatt Earp, reluctantly drawn back into service against a gang of marauders called The Cowboys, led by "Curly Bill" Brocius (Powers Boothe) and Johnny Ringo (Michael Biehn). It sets the famous Gunfight at the OK Choral about halfway through the film, building up afterward to a final confrontation.

But at the center of the film is an astonishing performance by Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday that is, by a considerable margin, the best of his career. Featuring a lisping Southern accent that’s jarring compared to how the actor normally talks, the part became so associated with the actor that he named his memoir “I’m Your Huckleberry,” after a line from the film. 

Kilmer’s Holliday acts with considerable drunken bluster, sort of as a way of confronting that he’s dying of tuberculosis. Kilmer’s never been better, although he managed to not get nominated for Best Supporting Actor, against the extremely stiff competition of winner Tommy Lee Jones (for The Fugitive), Ralph Fiennes (for Schindler’s List), the young Leonardo DiCaprio (for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape), John Malkovich (for In the Line of Fire) and Pete Postlethwaite (for In the Name of the Father.) 

Some Westerns are one big hero against one big villain, but that’s not Tombstone. The film featured an uncommonly deep cast of the type of actors you might expect to appear in a 1990s Western- Powers Boothe, Michael Rooker, Stephen Lang, Thomas Haden Church, Billy Bob Thornton, and, of course, Sam Elliott. Even Charlton Heston shows up, in one of his last prominent roles, while Robert Mitchum served as the narrator. Even Jason Priestley, at the height of his 90210 fame, had a small part, as did (you guessed it) Frank Stallone. 

Yes, it’s an extremely male cast, but it did have the always-appealing Dana Delany as Josephine, Wyatt Earp’s second wife.

It’s just a pure crowd-pleasing Western, a true triumph from Cosmatos, the director of Rambo: First Blood Part II and Cobra, who was making his second-to-last film before he died in 2005. But he came to the project late and Kilmer, in interviews, has credited Russell will performing some of the directorial functions.

Tombstone, which holds up marvelously to this day, is streaming on Hulu.