Movie · 1994 · Western, Drama, Action, Adventure · 3h 11m · PG-13 · English
Curator score: 2.4/10 (81.3K ratings)
The epic story of love and adventure in a lawless land.
Overview
From Wichita to Dodge City, to the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Wyatt Earp is taught that nothing matters more than family and the law. Joined by his brothers and Doc Holliday, Earp wages war on the dreaded Clanton and McLaury gangs.
Ratings
Curator score: 2.4/10
IMDb: 6.7/10
Letterboxd: 3.23/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 32%
Metacritic: 47
TMDB: 6.8/10
Director
Lawrence Kasdan
Production
Paragon Entertainment Corp., Tig Productions, Kasdan Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures
Cast
Kevin Costner, Dennis Quaid, Gene Hackman, David Andrews, Linden Ashby, Jeff Fahey, Joanna Going, Mark Harmon, Michael Madsen, Catherine O'Hara, Bill Pullman, Isabella Rossellini, Tom Sizemore, JoBeth Williams, Mare Winningham, James Gammon, Rex Linn, Randle Mell, Adam Baldwin, Annabeth Gish
Curator Review
Verdict
A sprawling, prestige-minded western with strong production values, a serious historical sweep, and a committed central performance, but it’s also famously overlong and dramatically uneven. If you want a stately, character-first take on Wyatt Earp rather than a lean, iconic shootout movie, it has enough craft to justify a watch.
Best for
viewers who like long-form historical epics
fans of somber, prestige westerns
people interested in Wyatt Earp as a mythic American figure
audiences who value atmosphere and scale over pace
Skip if
you want a tight, action-driven western
you prefer vivid supporting characters and quotable dialogue
you’re looking for a lighter or more entertaining frontier movie
you’re sensitive to slow pacing and runtime bloat
Overview
Wyatt Earp is the kind of western that wants to be definitive: broad in scope, serious in tone, and anchored by the idea that a man’s life can be shaped into national legend. Lawrence Kasdan stages it with polish and patience, and the film has real weight in its landscapes, costumes, and sense of period. Kevin Costner plays Earp as a figure of stubborn will, less a charming gunslinger than a man grinding himself into history.
Worth noting
The problem is that the movie often feels more dutiful than alive. It moves through biography, family, and frontier violence with prestige gravity, but the emotional momentum is thin, and the runtime can make every scene feel heavier than it should. The supporting cast helps, and the film has moments of genuine grandeur, but it rarely catches fire.
Bottom line
For viewers who like westerns as long, reflective American sagas, this has enough scale and seriousness to hold attention. For everyone else, it’s likely to feel like a handsome but overextended companion piece to better-known frontier myths.
Top Letterboxd reviews
matt lynch (2.5★) · 165 likes
Littered with great supporting performances from a stacked cast and shot through with Kasdan's unfussy prestige grandeur, this sort of transparently aches to be great just like its subject seems to, but never gains much dramatic momentum at all. Instead it settles for being a vignette-ish but ultimately weirdly turgid would-be epic that feels like it wants to maintain some ambivalent distance from a man who basically insisted that his obstinacy and propensity for violence was in fact a reflection… more Littered with great supporting performances from a stacked cast and shot through with Kasdan's unfussy prestige grandeur, this sort of transparently aches to be great just like its subject seems to, but never gains much dramatic momentum at all. Instead it settles for being a vignette-ish but ultimately weirdly turgid would-be epic that feels like it wants to maintain some ambivalent distance from a man who basically insisted that his obstinacy and propensity for violence was in fact a reflection… more
MichaelEternity (2★) · 134 likes
24 years later, confirming what I always knew even without spending 3 hours to see it until now: yep, this is the ungainly, inferior twin to "Tombstone" that nobody needs to bother with. Westerns suit Kevin Costner, but the man is no Kurt fuckin' Russell; meanwhile, poor Dennis Quaid has like 4 minutes of screen time in this whole 190-minute movie, not quite enough to compete with Val Kilmer's iconic portrayal of Doc Holliday; Sam Elliott is demoted into Michael… more 24 years later, confirming what I always knew even without spending 3 hours to see it until now: yep, this is the ungainly, inferior twin to "Tombstone" that nobody needs to bother with. Westerns suit Kevin Costner, but the man is no Kurt fuckin' Russell; meanwhile, poor Dennis Quaid has like 4 minutes of screen time in this whole 190-minute movie, not quite enough to compete with Val Kilmer's iconic portrayal of Doc Holliday; Sam Elliott is demoted into Michael… more
shookone (1★) · 115 likes
abysmally boring. it's 3 hours long without anything resembling a dramaturgy or aesthetical value. women are mainly whores or dying angels, Newton Howard's overly pathetic score extrapolates a whole lot of nothing and it's hard to believe Kevin Costner and his unleashed narcissism on full display was really a thing in the 90s.
haliii (2.5★) · 97 likes
This wasn’t bad but I expected more from a western.
It needed more action and overall the acting just didn’t feel that real or natural to me.
Compared to Tombstone, it feels way more focused on Wyatt Earp as a person than just being a normal western. Tombstone also has more iconic dialogue and characters, which made it a lot more memorable.
Adryon Thomas (3.5★) · 74 likes
Now this confuses me... five Razzie nominations? What!?!
Look, to be honest, I haven't seen Tombstone, and I know that the comparison of the two films fucked over Wyatt Earp - but winner of the worst remake? Really? The People of 1994 thought that this was worst than The Flintstones, City Slickers 2, and Beverly Hills Cop 3... Fuck the Razzies! I did have respect for them, but this literally makes no sense. Wyatt Earp, though it doesn't boast a… more