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Touches You

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Sadly Over-hyped

Fresh and Exciting

Impressive location shooting in northern Arizona helps this rather worn plot along, and so does the acting.Tom Conti, ex teacher and ex Civil War sergeant, his wife Kate Capshaw, and their little boy Kenny Morrison, pull up stakes back east and head out West where a man and his family can escape the violence of the Civil War and breathe the fresh, clean, anarchic air.They offend one of those crusty, villainous families that are so often offended in these Westerns -- "Shane," "Will Penny," the Clantons -- and Conti and family are pursued by these revenge-driven miscreants over snowy hill and grassy dale.Well, I'll tell you. They don't know nothing' about survival in the West. Their hides are saved only by the appearance of Sam Elliott in buckskin and leather, toting a repeating rifle and various other gear. Elliott guides them through the wilderness towards the rude log cabin, miles away, that they will some day call home. But, of course, not if the evil family has anything to say about it.Time and again, the pursuers and the pursued wound one another but each carries on, leaving a trail of blood. The pursuers actually are winnowed down. One by one, they are plugged, except for the youngest, who sensibly decides to hell with it and rides off alone towards home. The rest of the pursuers don't fare so well.The plot line really is hoary. A pioneer family are unprepared for the violence they encounter and are saved by a romantic, sun-tanned stranger. The family's wife is attracted towards the mysterious savior and vice versa. "Mrs. McKaskel, if you wasn't married I'd of chased you till you dropped," says Sam Elliott, by way of declaring his deep affection for her. Mrs. McKaskel's pretty pale-blue eyes glow with pleasure.The acting is professional enough. Nobody can complain. Sam Elliott is his usual laconic, masculine self. He has a habit of holding conversations while facing at a right angle to the other, which gives him an opportunity to stare over his shoulder at the person he's addressing. Poor Tom Conti is saddled with a face that's about as interesting as a bowl of porridge, a kind of fleshier Dustin Hoffman, and his voice sounds like he suffers from an adenoid condition. He handles the role very well but those attributes knee-cap his performance.Kate Capshaw is quite a fox when you get right down to it but she's usually cast as a properly brought up, middle-class figure, as she is here. Only one film, whose title I can't remember, gave her an opportunity to show a slinkier and sexier side. I was genuinely worried about the family's son. He's about ten or eleven years old. I quailed at the thought of another cuddly kid saying cute things, but this kid can act. It could have been awful. He might have had disabling asthma attacks under stress or something. I shudder at the thought. That I never wanted to stomp him like an insect is a tribute to his talent.I enjoyed the message though. I thought it was carefully considered, thoughtful, and humane. Only Wussies swear off violence. Real men kill.

Adapted from a Louis L'Amour book and made for television by HBO back when it was still trying to define itself as something other than "that movie channel on cable", The Quick and the Dead is a tale of independence, revenge, forbidden romance and the brutal truth of survival in the Wild West. It contrasts the larger-than-life persona of the frontiersman with the understated character of the settler and grapples with what it means to be an honorable man in a lawless land. Highlighted by a charismatic performance from Sam Elliott, as if there's any other kind, and an old fashioned plot that cares more about making sense than rushing from one scene to the next, this film is proof that great Westerns are always being made. People just aren't always paying attention.Duncan McKaskel (Tom Conti) is a Civil War veteran who came out of the horrors of Gettysburg with a loathing for violence. With his handsome wife (Kate Capshaw) and young son (Kenny Morrison), Duncan is leading his family into the Wyoming territory to make a new life for them all. In the middle of almost nowhere, the McKaskels run afoul of a gang of worthless toughs led by the smart but lazily evil Doc Shabitt (Matt Clark). Only the assistance of a traveling gunman named Con Vallian (Sam Elliott) saves the McKaskel's from an early death and helps them flee across the wilderness with Shabitt and his men in pursuit. But Vallian isn't motivated by the pureness of his heart. He only got involved to kill a half-breed (Patrick Kilpatrick) riding with Shabitt and has his eyes on Duncan's wife.There's really only two complaints you can make about The Quick and the Dead. Since most of the movie sees Shabitt's gang getting killed one at a time, there's never that much sense of external danger to the McKaskels and Vallian. And the make-up applied to Patrick Kilpatrick to pass him off as an Indian instead gives him the look of an Oompaloompa with gigantism. Con Vallian is supposed to be a half-breed too, but they didn't slap a bunch of goop on Sam Elliott's face. Perhaps they should have simply found an actor who looked slightly less white than a guy named Patrick Kilpatrick.Other than that, this is a fine motion picture. The lack of external threat is more than compensated for by the internal dynamic between the McKaskels and Vallian. First, it establishes that Vallian is basically using this family for his own ends, distracting Shabitt and his gang so Vallian has a shot at the half-breed. It gives an edge to Vallian's presence as a challenge to Duncan as a man, as a hero to his son an a potential lover to his wife. The conflict between those two men is at the heart of this story and the scales aren't tipped to one side or the other. Duncan isn't presented as a hapless sad sack. He's a brave and admirable man who's out of his depth and knows it.Indeed, there's a good bit of this that plays like a romance novel where the woman is caught between the good man she married and the mysterious bad boy who rides into their lives and it's how Vallian handles that situation that truly reveals whether he's a hero or a villain. And it's all handled with a minimal amount of melodrama because there's no room for that stuff in the hard land of 1876 Wyoming. This isn't about Duncan or Vallian being the better man. It's about people who have enough respect for each other to not let their emotions overwhelm them.The Quick and the Dead makes you wish Sam Elliott had been born several decades earlier so he could have made dozens and dozens of Westerns at the peak of the genre's popularity. Tom Conti is no slouch, though. He endows Duncan McKaskel with a strength that isn't as ostentatious as Vallian's but is ever present. Matt Clark is an effective villain who finds himself undone by his commitment to his own villainy and Kate Capshaw is quite good as a woman growing into the expanded role both allowed and demanded of her by the frontier.This is a quality Western. Yes, it does look and feel like a TV move instead of a big screen product but don't hold that against it. You won't regret slowing down to watch The Quick and the Dead.

Yep, the reason is the man who wrote it - Louis L'Amour. Most of his stories, although about tough men, always had women in them - and they were strong women. Women with common sense who knew how to get things done. In the Quick and the Dead it was Susanna McKaskel played by Kate Capshaw. Sam Elliott had it right when he said she was a handsome woman. Kate Capshaw was indeed beautiful in this film. She reminded me of a clean-scrubbed, Debbie Boone type "real" woman! At least in this movie, who knows what is in anyone's home life. In the story, she is traveling by covered wagon with her husband and son to a new log cabin home in the wilderness. They had set off alone due to disease sweeping the wagon train. They are beset by a group of "bad guys" who follow them relentlessly, thinking they can steal their horses, goods and one of the outlaws wants Kate. Of course they never figured on Sam Elliott as Con Vallian mixing in to help the pilgrims. I'm not going to give the details of the story away, except to say it was well done and one of those movies that you "know", that's the way it really was in the old West - not fancy dressed gunslingers parading up and down the town street. The western landscape was beautifully photographed. This is a Conagher type movie that is down to earth with hard living and real drama. As for the actors of course Sam Elliott is always great, with his smartest move marrying that pretty Katharine Ross in real life. He fits in somewhere between John Wayne and Clint Eastwood in the resourceful, tough guy roles. And he has that deep voice that allows no argument. He has so many great movies to his name like Gettysburg, We Were Soldiers, Conagher, Road House and Shadow Riders. He's a top hand at acting. Tom Conti as Duncan the husband was a bit of a disappointment for me. Not that there was anything wrong with his acting, he is good. I just think he was miscast and looked too much like a soft modern man instead of a disillusioned ex soldier from the Civil War taking on the extremely dangerous trek to the West. Then again that was the part he was playing, and if it hadn't been for that lean, mean mountain man helping, he and his family would have been dead. Kate Capshaw whose real last name is Nail, got her name from first husband Robert Capshaw. Then she married Steven Spielberg, her director in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Spielberg may be way out in left field politically, but he sure knows how to choose a good woman for a wife. Unfortunately, Kate's career has been up and down but don't think she has to worry with the Spielberg bucks. I like Kate's style and wish hubby Steven would get her more work back into the movies. The McKaskel's young son in the movie is played by Kenny Morrison. He was no Brandon De Wilde in Shane, but did fairly well for the part given him. He continues to work in film including some CSI TV work. He is just coming into his prime so who knows. The actor playing the half-breed Indian tracker was Patrick Kilpatrick is certainly a good actor. However, I'd have liked to see a real American Indian play the part, but I guess they couldn't find a Graham Greene. I have to mention the leader of the outlaws, Matt Clark. This guy has been in so many movies and TV shows his face is like a member of the family. I've never seen him do a bad acting job - he's a professional. I especially remember his great supporting acting in Emperor of the North Pole as the yard worker bullied by Earnest Borgnine, a part in The Outlaw Josey Wales and a host of others. I have no idea why another movie in 1995, took the same title as this The Quick and the Dead. It's a silly excuse for a Western fantasy starring Sharon Stone, and who knows why a good actor like Gene Hackman would associate himself with it. Stone doesn't surprise me as she uses her sexuality to get roles then pretends she is morally superior in real life. Be sure not to confuse the two movies - the Louis L'Amour/Sam Elliott 1987 version is the real Western. If you like westerns with a truer to life flavor, and if you like Louis L'Amour, this movie will appeal to you. It is well worth watching.

This is one terrific western film. Sam Elliott, who is marvelous as a "Shane-like" character, plays a drifter who follows a family of green homesteaders across the western plains and protects them from a savage pack of outlaws. The family, which includes Tom Conti and Kate Capshaw, also becomes more sufficient as the story progresses. It's a lean, well-directed film, with not a scene or character wasted. Not until Unforgiven did a western film arrives as superior as this HBO production. The story is based on an entertaining L. Lamour novel of the same name. The novel has a significant plot twist from the film, which I won't reveal here.