
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, June 27, 1994                    TAG: 9406250033 
SECTION: DAILY BREAK                     PAGE: E5    EDITION: FINAL   
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER 
DATELINE: 940627                                 LENGTH: Long

YOU'LL LOVE BEING SWEPT AWAY BY ``EARP''

{LEAD} IN SPITE OF the familiarity of the material, Lawrence Kasdan's ``Wyatt Earp'' is epic moviemaking on a level seen all too seldom these days. More than just a fact-oriented depiction of the much-filmed Wyatt Earp, it is the saga of a family that moves westward in turbulent, lawless times. We go along, from 1860 to 1890. In the process, we are transported to another time and another place. This ability to take us to another world is the special gift of the movies.

From the initial sweeping vista of an Iowa cornfield, we are promised that the scale is going to be a large one. The overly publicized length of ``Wyatt Earp'' (three hours and 10 minutes) should not keep you from seeing it. It seems much shorter.

{REST} Nicholas Earp, the father of the clan played by Gene Hackman, introduces the film's theme. He preaches that family is everything. The Earp brothers must stand together above all else. They must fight back at ``viciousness'' and not waver from a challenge. The intensity of his resolve warns us to take this seriously - and remember it at the O.K. Corral.

Kasdan, who co-wrote the script, is clearly going for a ``Godfather''-like family drama here. He isn't as successful, mainly because he turns the film into a star vehicle for his protege and now-superstar, Kevin Costner. Costner proves once again that he isn't much of an actor, but he again reminds us that he is a ``movie star'' who will risk much. In attempting to play Wyatt Earp from youth to old age, he occasionally makes a fool of himself - especially in the silly-looking tinted hair he wears in the early scenes. The other production values are so impressive, though, that we are encouraged to float along with the masquerade.

Wyatt's youthful love, portrayed by Annabeth Gish, dies of typhoid. The tragedy sends him back to the unruly West, a life he had agreed to give up. His common-law wife, Mattie, is played by a girlish-looking Mare Winningham, who doesn't seem rough enough for the part. Her devotion to him, though, is suggested with pathos. His final love, the woman to whom he was married for 40 years, is played by Joanna Going, an actress so lovely and stately that she should emerge as a star.

The Earp women suggest that women of the period were pawns of their menfolk, but still full-blown characters. Among the wives is a practicing prostitute, played by JoBeth Williams, and a homebody, played by the ``Home Alone'' mom, Catherine O'Hara.

The film is easily stolen by Dennis Quaid as a tubercular Doc Holliday, the quick-draw artist and cynical dentist who claims he was once a Southern gentleman but now doesn't care about life. Quaid starved himself to the skeleton-like creature we see on screen. The film comes alive whenever Quaid is on screen. He may well get an Oscar nomination in the supporting category.

Isabella Rosselini is miscast as Big Nose Kate, the low-life woman who accompanied Doc on many of his journeys. Her radiance works against the part.

Notable in other supporting roles are Mark Harmon as Sheriff John H. Behan (whose rivalry with Wyatt is, strangely, not developed), Betty Buckley (currently starring in the musical ``Sunset Boulevard'' in London) as Ma Earp, Adam Baldwin (the oldest of the Baldwin brothers) as a bad guy, and Bill Pullman as Ed Masterson, a gunman who is ``too affable'' to be successful.

It is a joy to again hear a musical score as thundering and obtrusive as John Newton Howard's. Epics need scores this big.

The treatment is much darker and more introspective than standard Westerns. Clearly, Kasdan wanted to make a ``Lawrence of Arabia'' here. His final scene, in which a ``fan'' of Wyatt's suggests that the legend is very different from the reality, is stolen from ``Lawrence of Arabia.''

Wyatt emerges as a hardened, bitter man who realizes that the people he saves often aren't worth saving. Even the famed gunfight at the O.K. Corral is downplayed as what it probably was, a petty little alley fight that was completed within minutes.

For standard Western fans, there are plenty of saloon fights, fisticuffs, hard riding and hard shooting.

One does have to wonder, why all this opulence and effort to tell a story so often told before?

Yes, the effort would have been better realized elsewhere, but here, at least, is the sort of epic saga almost nonexistent in current cinema. All Western fans, Costner fans, and epic-movie fans should unite to support it. It may be dark and bitter, but it's still a lot of show.

by CNB