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Eccentric British filmmaker Alex Cox, best known for avant-garde movies such as "Repo Man" (1984), "Sid & Nancy" (1986), and "Straight-To-Hell" (1986), has directed a shoddy western mockumentary, "Tombstone Rashomon," about the Wednesday in October 26, 1881, when men swapped lead around 3 PM near the O.K. Corral, in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp, along with tubercular gambler & dentist Doc Holliday, slapped leather with a cattle rustling clan led by Ike Clanton, his brother Billy, the McLaury brothers, and Billy Claiborne. During this historic, 30-second gunfight, when reportedly 30 gunshots rang out, Billy Clanton and the two McLaury died from bullet wounds. Several vintage Hollywood epics, such as "Frontier Marshal" (1939), "My Darling Clementine" (1946), "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" (1957), "Hour of the Gun" (1968), "Doc" (1971), "Tombstone" (1993), and "Wyatt Earp" (1994), have venerated this landmark. Traditionally, Hollywood has hallowed the Earps and Doc Holliday with heroic halos, but demonized the Clanton & McLaury brothers and Claiborne as dastards. "Hour of the Gun" and "Doc" are the only two films that have cast suspicions on Wyatt Earp's virtue and portrayed him as callous assassin intent on exacting revenge against Clanton and his henchmen for attacking his family after the gunfight. Eventually, James Garner, who played Earp in "Hour of the Gun," reprised his role as an older Wyatt Earp in Blake Edwards' seriocomic saga "Sunset" (1988), about the Tombstone lawman flirting with Hollywood during his twilight years.
Basically, Cox has adopted an arthouse format influential Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa originated with his classic movie "Rashomon" (1950). Kurosawa staged a samurai warrior's murder as well as the rape of the samurai's bride from the multiple perspectives of the bandit, the bride, the samurai's ghost, and a woodcutter. Basically, these characters offered opposing perspectives about the two crimes to render a greater truth. Not surprisingly, Cox paid tribute to Kurosawa with his 1999 documentary about the Japanese filmmaker called "Kurosawa: The Last Emperor." Meanwhile, Paul Newman toplined in a western "Rashomon" remake "The Outrage" (1964), co-starring William Shatner. Similarly, "The Outrage" depicted the crime from another variety of viewpoints. The multiplicitous ambiguity of this treatment lends it a sophistication which otherwise it would have lacked. If witnesses were posted at all four corners of an intersection, their comments about a traffic accident would reflect their unique perspectives. Biased as each of us inherently is are by what we witness, nobody ever remembers an event exactly the same way as other people may.
Recreating the O.K. Corral gunfight for "Tombstone Rashomon," Cox searches for clarity amidst the chaos of the aftermath, with this multiple-perspective format. According to the film, time-traveling documentarians (yes, we're talking science fiction) have been teleported back to 1881 to review the shootout from the standpoints of both the participants as well as the witnesses. Unfortunately, owing to a glitch in the space-time continuum, the crew arrives a day late! Nevertheless, despite this sidesplitting blunder, our robust time-travelers manage to compensate for their tardiness and embark on their project. In many ways, "Tombstone Rashomon" resembles an earlier Cox film "Walker" (1987) about an opportunistic, antebellum, American soldier-of-fortune, William Walker (Ed Harris), who ruled Nicaragua as its president from 1856-57. Cox cluttered up "Walker" with several outrageous anachronisms, such as helicopters, automatic weapons, Newsweek magazine, and Pepsi Cola. Predictably, "Walker" audiences were puzzled, while infuriated critics panned the film for its inconsistent ambiance. Cox used these anachronisms to draw parallels between the present and the past. This schizophrenic approach created nothing short of incoherence for "Tombstone Rashomon." Remember, these documentarians arrived too late to cover the shootout! So how did they get all that violent footage? Indeed, the survivors and the bystanders provide nothing new about the O.K. Corral. Meantime, the time-travelers are guilty of tampering with the perspectives of the participants. Interviewing several people, they advise them about their on-camera demeanor. For example, Wyatt Earp refuses to tell what happened at the O.K. Corral. Instead, he relies on factual information so he doesn't incriminate himself. Nevertheless, in reality, after the gunfight, the authorities arrested the Earps and Holliday, but a courtroom trial exonerated them of all murder charges.
Writer & director Alex Cox lensed this half-baked rehash on location at the venerable Old Tucson Studios in Arizona. Hundreds of 'Golden Era' Hollywood horse operas, including the John Wayne oaters "Rio Bravo," "El Dorado," and "The Sons of Katie Elder," were produced on those premises. Although it resembles a standard-issue, low-budget, B-western shoot'em up, with sturdy production values, "Tombstone Rashomon" never attempts to sensationalize the fracas. Initially, armchair frontier historians may find this faux documentary approach provocative, until the recurring anachronisms skewer its authenticity. Since the camera crew is never shown, you wonder why Cox didn't delete this preposterous premise which provides few factual revelations. While this approach may have benefited the political agenda of "Walker," it doesn't lend itself to the O.K. Corral material.
Cox's experimental antics won't amuse typical moviegoers who prefer straightforward westerns that maintain status quo conventions. The worst "Tombstone-Rashomon" surprise takes place when the Earps and Holliday pile into a contemporary SUV, complete with municipal police decals, and cruise off to the gunfight. If this doesn't shatter the atmosphere for you, you may have few objections about this farce. Primarily, Cox undermines this documentary with so many anachronisms that it makes "Tombstone Rashomon" look like an Edward D. Wood movie. Ranked as the worst Hollywood filmmaker ever, Wood not only made the world's worst horror movie "Plan 9 from Outer Space" (1959), but also the world's worst documentary "Glen or Glenda" (1953). Cox subdues the melodrama, which is monotonous at best, and the primary characters never generate enough charisma to engage our sympathies. Clocking in at a mere 80-minutes, "Tombstone Rashomon" amounts to a complete catastrophe as a speculative documentary and divulges nothing new about a trigger-happy chapter of western history.
score 1/10
zardoz-13 28 April 2020
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw5684995/ |
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28-2-2021 11:21:02