Review for Tombstone: The Director's Cut

Introduction

Tombstone is my favourite Western of the last thirty years. Ok, some may consider that as damning with faint praise, given the dearth of Westerns that have been released in that period, but Tombstone is a film that I can happily stick on my DVD player and watch again and again to my heart's content. There are not a lot of films in any genre that have that sort of replayability for me. Except that the original DVD really isn't up to much. Entertainment in Video released Tombstone over eight years ago now, a non-anamorphic print, simple stereo, and minimal extras. In the US, the letterbox DVD was quickly upgraded with a special edition Director's Cut, and you would have thought that the same would have happened in the UK as well. Tombstone was top of my list to double dip, and I looked forward to that Director's Cut with inappropriate eagerness. It never came. I had totally forgotten about it until last year, when looking through an online bargain bucket, what should pop up but Tombstone DC? It was released, finally, by Buena Vista in April 2009, and it has been residing in my to-watch pile for the last nine months, constantly pushed back by review disc commitments. I oughtn't not to have waited, prolonging the anticipation intensifies failed expectations.


The Earp brothers, having retired from the law-keeping business bring their collective spouses with them to the booming mining town of Tombstone in an effort to make their fortune. Soon after arriving, Wyatt evicts the obnoxious Billy Bob Thornton from a saloon and he and his brothers, Morgan and Virgil take a stake in the gambling activities therein. However, all is not peaceful in the town, as the law is impotent there and a criminal organisation, the Cowboys run riot in the town. Wyatt is reluctant to become involved in the town's problems, but his elder brother, Virgil cannot stand by and let the violence continue. After the town Marshall is killed by the leader of the Cowboys, Curly Bill, Virgil takes the position and deputises Morgan, outlawing all firearms in the town. When the Cowboys object to this, a showdown ensues and Wyatt reluctantly joins his brothers and his friend, Doc Holliday in the now legendary gunfight at the O.K Corral. Seeking revenge, the Cowboys exact a terrible vengeance on the Earps. Wyatt bows to the inevitable and picks up his guns to end the scourge of the Cowboys once and for all.

Picture

The disc still sucks. Oh, the 2.35:1 image may be anamorphic, but it's a wretched standards conversion. Rather than converting from Film to PAL, they've converted from an NTSC source to PAL, with all the attendant problems that come associated with it. You have softness of image, ghosting, and judder during pans and scrolls. Dustier or murkier scenes are also excessively indistinct. If the visuals aren't enough, the run time is indicative, as there is no 4% PAL speed up. There was on the EiV disc, which came in at 2 hours. With an extra 9 minutes of footage, this Director's Cut should have been 2 hours and 9 minutes, but because of the standards conversion, it comes in at 2 hours and 15. To add insult to injury, the colours are over-saturated as well, with reds tending to bleed.


I accept standards conversions in Far Eastern Cinema on DVD, the companies usually don't have the resources or the budget for adequate transfers. I've come to expect it in anime, but I certainly don't expect it in Hollywood movies, where studios are big enough to know better, and more importantly afford better. The image quality on this disc is offensive to my eyes, and there's little between this disc and the original letterbox one.

Sound

The DD 5.1 surround track is definitely an improvement over the original pro-logic, the dialogue is clear, and the soundstage is put to good use conveying the action and Western ambience. But you do have to whack the volume up to make use of it, as the overall audio level is a tad low. This release also sees English subtitles of the regular and Hard of Hearing variety. The music by Bruce Broughton conjures the feel of the best westerns, being majestic and 'large'. He gets the perfect feel in his arrangements and the film is enhanced as a result.

Extras

The disc blurb does promise Dutch and German subtitles, and the menu on inserting the disc does seem to confirm that, asking you to choose between English, Dutch and German, but it's a distraction, as all you get on this disc are English menus, English copyright screens, and English subtitles.

The two-disc set comes in an Amaray case, with the second disc on a central hinged flap. The only paperwork aside from the sleeve, is an ad extolling the virtues of Blu-ray.

The sole extra on Disc 1 is the audio commentary from Director George P. Cosmatos. It's really one to be avoided, as it's a monotonous, state-the-obvious commentary, fairly gappy, and not all that informative. There's certainly no mention in what I heard of the original director, or the changes made to the script. Clicking on the IMDB page is of more use, and even if half of what is said there is true, then the shooting of this film was infinitely more interesting than this commentary makes out.


The rest of the extras are on disc 2.

The Making of Tombstone has three featurettes to it, An Ensemble Cast, Making An Authentic Western, and The Gunfight At The O.K. Corral. You can play all, or select them individually, and they run to a total of 28 minutes. There are interviews with the cast and crew, a look behind the scenes, punctuated with clips from the film, but it is still a little more informative than your usual EPK footage.

The Director's Original Storyboard has a camera panning over the pencil drawings for the O.K. Corral sequence. This lasts 4 minutes and is accompanied by music from the film.

The Trailers and TV Spots speak for themselves. There are 7 TV spots, the theatrical and the teaser trailer. It's worth looking at the trailers as they hint at countless deleted scenes, notably absent from this disc.

Speaking of absent, it looks like they just copied the blurb from the US release without checking the discs. The cover promises an Interactive Tombstone Timeline, the Tombstone Epitaph - Actual Newspaper Account, and a DVD-ROM featurette, none of which is actually on the discs.

There is an Easter Egg though, and if you can find it, you'll be able to peruse an image gallery with Promo artwork and set designs.

Conclusion

I finished off my original review hoping for a re-release. Eight years on, and I'm still hoping, as this disc just isn't good enough. Tombstone is still my favourite Western of recent years, and I'm still going to recommend it as strongly as before. It certainly has aged well over the last 17 years, and I think it's because it strove for an air of authenticity that many other tellings of the legend eschewed, opting to recreate the original Gunfight at the OK Corral as accurately as modern cinematography and the script allowed. The West that it eulogises is a gritty, grimy and brutal place, with Tombstone a curious mishmash of rough and refined, reflecting its place as a hub of commercial activity and entrepreneurship back in the late eighteen-hundreds. But once it has its history straight and organised, it takes what it needs, dumps the rest, and has as much fun as possible with the story, filling the screen with scenery chewing, larger than life characters.


It's as if everyone has twice the normal allotment of personality, when even the incidentals like Billy Clanton, Sherman McMasters and the actor Fabian light up the screen. You have great performances from the likes of Powers Boothe as Curly Bill, Michael Biehn as Johnny Ringo, Sam Elliot and Bill Paxton as Virgil and Morgan Earp. Kurt Russell's Wyatt Earp is an idea of what the Clint Eastwood, man with no name character would be like if he had a conscience, and compassion. Of course Val Kilmer owns this film with his portrayal of the immortal Doc Holliday. He creates a character that is educated, erudite, refined, mischievous, mocking, and lethal, and leaves behind a ream of quotes that will most likely go down in film history.


The director's cut adds to this, offering us a glimpse of what the Doc was up to when the Cowboys unleashed their vengeance upon the Earps, and his farewell to Kate. Wyatt's relationship with Mattie gets some important development, showing the extent of her addiction to laudanum, and Johnny Ringo gets a little more screen time, when we learn just what happened to the McMasters character. All of the director's cut additions contribute to the story, build the characters, while maintaining the flow and pacing of the film. There's nothing extraneous, and it all works well.


Tombstone is a 9 out of 10 film for me, but for the second time the disc makes me mark it down. A standards conversion is just not on. But, I wasn't even aware this disc had been released, until I happened to see it on sale, so I'm guessing that many people out there will still have the original non-anamorphic version. If you are thinking of double-dipping, then you ought to be aware that this month, the Blu-ray disc of Tombstone is released, and if you're going to upgrade, might as well go all the way and get the extra 600 odd lines of definition. Surely they can't screw the picture on that up! Either way, I don't think we'll be seeing another release of this on DVD, and the picture quality aside, the extra features on this set don't warrant a double dip.