A deadpan black comedy, Sam Raimi's fast-paced movie looks and sounds like a Leone oater but more so.
Comment
06/24/06
The Quick and the Dead (1994)
57
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:37
Fresh:21
Rotten:16
Average Rating:5.9/10
Runtime: 1 hr 45 mins
Genre: Westerns
Synopsis: Sharon Stone stars as Ellen, a beautiful gunslinger with a cloudy past. She arrives in the town of Redemption with a bone to pick, namely with one John Herod (Gene Hackman, BONNIE AND CLYDE, THE... [More]
Starring: Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe
Director: Sam Raimi
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Reviews for The Quick and the Dead
Raimi's movie borrows heavily from classic spaghetti westerns, but Raimi has a style of his own, and plenty of it.
02/03/07
Raimi's choice to give the film a comic book-like aura of mingled camp and grit makes for some fitfully energetic and entertaining moments, but it's not enough to overcome The Quick and the Dead's primary fault.
01/01/00
Top CriticThere should be a law that, if you're going to make a terribly clichéd film, then you at least have to do something original in it. The Quick and the Dead exemplifies this.
01/01/00
As preposterous as the plot was, there was never a line of Hackman dialogue that didn't sound as if he believed it. The same can't be said, alas, for Sharon Stone...
01/01/00
Top CriticEven when the script for The Quick and the Dead runs out of surprises, which is very early, director Sam Raimi keeps the action fast and funny, though he falters when he strains for seriousness.
01/09/02
The whole film has tremendous visual style, and the frequent bursts of violence are delivered with a clever and often hilarious use of special effects.
04/17/01
As it is, the film's more off-the-wall tendencies -- and there are plenty -- just seem ill at ease, if not completely out of place.
01/01/00
This film is wonderfully directed by Sam Raimi, who makes every shot pop up. From the gripping opening scene to the weird finale, every scene is full of Raimi's great visual style.
09/10/02
You get lots of clothes here, but no emperor.
01/01/00
Top CriticMr. Raimi is limited by a sketch mentality, which means his jokes tend to be over long before his films end. But his tastes for visual mischief and crazy, ill-advised homage can still make for sly, sporadic fun.
05/20/03
Top CriticSam Raimi does a lot of interesting things in The Quick and the Dead and Sharon Stone plays a convincing female gunfighter, but the one-horse plot with no subplots to generate additional interest becomes a drag.
09/19/09
Without a real focus on Raimi's satirical sensibilities and acrobatic camera tricks, it's just a less-than-mediocre knock-off of Eastwood's oeuvre.
01/01/00
Perhaps another director could have gotten both tribute and parody to work together; in Raimi's hands, they instead cast doubt upon each other.
01/01/00
It's a mess, and one that even the pickled cowboys behind me found yawningly tedious, and that's not something I ever thought I'd be saying about a Sam Raimi movie with the word “dead” in the title.
01/01/00
Although Stone may be pleasing to some eyes, she's pretty small in the saddle here -- just an innocuous gender twist on the reluctant cowboy hero. And her story of hellbent revenge is about as compelling as a 30-second fragrance commercial.
01/01/00
Top CriticWhat Raimi can't find is a center. He hankers for us to giggle at the brutal archetypes he's parodying and to warm to them, too. It won't wash, pardner.
05/12/01
Top CriticRarely dull, it is not noticeably compelling either, and as the derivative offshoot of a derivative genre, it inevitably runs out of energy well before any of its hotshots runs out of bullets.
02/13/01
Top CriticAnother one of those movies meant for movie freaks.
10/10/01
Sam Raimi's over-the-top homage/sendup of old westerns actually succeeds in making Sharon Stone a believable gunslinger.
01/01/00
Latest News for The Quick and the Dead
June 29, 2007:
Crowe & Di Caprio to Team up for Ridley Scott's "Body of Lies"
Man, Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe must really like working together... More...
January 30, 2007:
Sam Raimi Has Been Discussing "Hobbit" Plans
At first it just seemed like a smart fanboy's best-case scenario: If Peter Jackson can't (or won't) direct "The Hobbit," then how about that Sam Raimi guy?!?!? Well,... More...
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