The Quick and The Dead (1995)

Idea: A female gunfighter (Sharon Stone) returns to her home town to kill the man (Gene Hackman) who stole her childhood. She becomes involved in a tournament with a kid who claims to be his son (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his former partner, Cort (Russell Crowe) who has gone straight.

You know what I think the deal is with westerns? I think they are required by law to be over the top. The same way action movies have to have a certain amount of cheese dialogue. In westerns, it's never a close-up, it's an extreme close-up. It's never just tense, it's DRAMA!, and it comes with its own punctuation. That's how I always feel when I am watching them.

I'm going to be honest with you, straight up, that I watched this movie during my Leonardo DiCaprio phase. You know what? When you are a little girl, you like little girly men. So, being as how I was 12 when I saw it, you are just going to have to cut me some slack. Man, that seems like forever ago. Besides, Stone gave up part of her salary just to keep Dicaprio in it. So there.

This movie was, however, my introduction to Crowe. He is so method. I like it when people are method. I remember watching it for DiCaprio and being all distracted by Crowe. At the time, I was wondering, "Who are you?!", but now I realize his magnetic power. He strikes me as a bit of a drama queen, though.

To be honest, I don't really have anything to say about Stone and Hackman. Oh, Gary Sinise is in the movie for a little while! I love Sinise. He's so good. So good and so underrated.

As for Sam Raimi (director) and Simon Moore (writer), well, Raimi is finally finding his voice, and Moore should probably stifle his. Any one who includes a vacuous blind character deserves a smack. They are just as annoyingly tacked on as the vacuous black man we see so often today. I don't get why people do that.