THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, December 2, 1995 TAG: 9512020058
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
PERSONALLY, I'D like a good old-fashioned Western now, complete with epic photography, a rousing musical score and lots of action. ``Wild Bill,'' unfortunately, is not that Western, despite being directed by dust-lover Walter Hill.
Hollywood is obsessed currently with debunking the very genre it tries to sell. The film goes out of its way to explain all the psychological mumbo jumbo behind gunfighters and how the legends were really myths.
But do we really need to know that the wild West was dirty and muddy, that the streets weren't paved and there were no outdoor toilets, that it was mainly misfit lowlifes from back east who went west and that shootouts weren't so glamorous after all? Someone should tell the producers of ``Wild Bill,'' that it's all right for movies to be just make-believe.
Wild Bill Hickcock reportedly liked his own legend, dressing like a dandy and meeting his public with the flair of a movie star right up until he was shot in the head. Jeff Bridges, one of our finest natural actors, turns in a thoughtful, slightly tongue-in-cheek, performance as Wild Bill in his last days. He's losing his sight, is addicted to opium and seems to accept the fate that must soon be his. Bridges, with flowing hair and droopy moustache, looks the role. He deserves a better movie than this.
The storytelling is a mess. It lacks focus and drama. Hill has flashbacks within the flashbacks until we're not sure who's talking or what's happening.
There is a large and interesting cast, however. Ellen Barkin is an appropriately tough Calamity Jane - even though she is too petite to suggest the alcoholic rowdy.
Christina Applegate of TV's ``Married. . . With Children'' is an ``upstairs girl'' who befriends the punk who wants to kill Bill. David Arquette (of the Roseanna and Patricia Arquettes) has what could be a star-making role as Crooked Nose Jack McCall, the killer. Diane Lane, whose entire performance is in murky black and white, plays the killer's mother, and the lost love of Wild Bill.
Keith Carradine plays Buffalo Bill. Bruce Dern is here in a typical Bruce Dern role, as a weasly sidewinder who challenges Wild Bill, even though he's confined to a wheelchair. Marjoe Gortner, once a child evangelist who starred in an Oscar-winning documentary about phony preachers, has a bit part as a screaming preacher.
Bridges lends humor to the line, ``Awful lot of people want a piece of Wild Bill.''
That's, unfortunately, the way this movie is put together - in bits and pieces. Western fans, though, might as well turn out anyway. A noisy shoot-'em-up is difficult to find these days - even if it insists upon being arty. MEMO: MOVIE REVIEW
``Wild Bill''
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Ellen Barkin, John Hurt, Diane Lane, David
Arquette, Christina Applegate, Bruce Dern, Keith Carradine
MPAA rating: R (shootouts galore, a sex scene atop a bar)
Mal's rating: two stars
Locations: Chesapeake Square, Greenbrier in Chesapeake; Janaf, Main
Gate in Norfolk; Lynnhaven, Pembroke in Virginia Beach by CNB