The screenplay, written by Dan Gordon in collaboration with the director, Lawrence Kasdan, employs the time-honored biopic method of establishing a few shorthand themes and repeating them again and again. Young Wyatt gets nightly lectures at the dinner table from his father (Gene Hackman) about the importance of blood bonds: "Family comes first!" He absorbs this lesson to such a degree that it explains, in this version anyway, much of his motivation at the OK Corral and afterwards.
As a young man, Earp resembles old Jimmy Stewart characters.
Bashful but single-minded, he turns down the offers of fast women in saloons because he intends to marry a girl back home (Annabeth Gish).
He comes a-courtin' with flowers, and before long they are married and living in a cozy cottage. Then she dies tragically, and he seems to vow never to trust his emotions with any non-family member again.
The movie follows Earp's progress through the West, his employment as a stagecoach driver and a Wells Fargo man, and his stints as a lawman in Dodge City and Tombstone. Curiously, because the script places such emphasis on family, his brothers do not emerge very vividly. Even the strong actor Michael Madsen, as Virgil Earp, has so little dialogue and screen time that he doesn't emerge as truly individual. And the brothers James and Morgan are even less visible; the wives or mistresses of the three Earp brothers make more of an impression, if only because they spend so much time arguing with Wyatt's notions of family honor and duty.
The character who is always in the foreground of the Earp saga is Doc Holliday, the dentist and gambler who casts his lot with the Earps. Dying of tuberculosis, he has nothing to lose in lending his gun to their battles. Dennis Quaid plays the character in a stunning masquerade; having lost 38 pounds and grown a mustache for the role, he is scarcely recognizable. But his performance, and the whole movie, suffer from comparison with "Tombstone," released in December 1993, which was more intense and clearly told. Quaid's performance is laconic and droll, but lacks the humor and the sublime detachment of Val Kilmer's in the earlier film. And, for that matter, Kurt Russell's Wyatt Earp was more self-assured, more sharply defined, than Kevin Costner's character.
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