Great Film overall

Best movie ever!

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

A true Western for western fans is what we got here. Down to earth and believable this movie has grit and realism in several parts that when put together bring credibility to the well told tale of the gunfight at OK corral and then some. James Garner pulls it off nicely along with a splendid supporting cast that all relish their roles and hold nothing back. Decent musical score that helps us stay tuned in too. Enjoy the whiskey drinking, horses, saloons, dust, threats, good and bad guys and notice how the law worked but really didn't. Its like they were between trusting it and not trusting it and this grey zone is where this films spends its time. Law and order was necessary or total chaos would reign. However, the law was in its beginning stages and was not mature enough or strong enough to stand on its own. Furthermore, it could be bought and manipulated of which this movie shows well. The movie is a must see again which is the true test of a good flick and worthy of being in ones library. Get a snack, tasty drink and begin the...

Probably the most famous lawmaker from the old west is Wyatt Earp (1848 – 1929), possibly because he survived the craziness and actually went to work for Hollywood in his old age during the silent era, hob- knobbing with directors John Ford and Raoul Walsh, and actors William Hart, Tom Mix, and Harry Carey. Some say he even had an influence on a young John Wayne.Earp is most famous for the "Gunfight at the OK Corral", made famous in novels and films. Earp was first featured in the 1923 "Wild Bill Hickok" where he was played by Bert Lindley. Earp himself worked behind the scenes with his buddy William Hart (who played Hickok). He appeared again in "Frontier Marshall" (1934) based on the novel of the same name. George O'Brien played Earp. John Ford produced the first notable film about Earp, called "My Darling Clementine" (1946) which many people consider a great film. Henry Fonda played Earp and Victor Mature played a wonderful coughing Doc Holiday. Old Man Clanton was played savagely by Walter Brennan and John Ireland played Billy Clanton. Ward Bond and Tim Holt played Earp's brothers.The "Wyatt Earp" TV series (1955 – 61) had Hugh O'Brian as Earp and Douglas Fowley as Doc. Ned Buntline was played by Lloyd Corrigan and Old Man Clanton by Trevor Bardette. The series gave birth to the 1957 film "Gunfight at OK Corral" with Burt Lancaster (Earp), Kirk Douglas (Doc), Lyle Bettger (Ike Clanton), Dennis Hopper as a cowardly Billy Clanton, and John Ireland as Johnny Ringo. John Sturges directed this film and re-visited the era with "Hour of the Gun" (1967) with James Garner (Earp), Jason Robards (Doc) and Robert Ryan (Ike Clanton).In more recent years, "Tombstone" (1993) and "Wyatt Earp" (1994) gave us more intense portraits. In Tombstone, we have Kurt Russell (Earp), Val Kilmer (doc) and Stephen Lang (Ike Clanton) with Sam Elliott and Bill Paxton as the Earp brothers, Powers Boothe as an irredeemable Curly Bill Brocius and Michael Biehn as the deadly Johnny Ringo. "Wyatt Earp" had Kevin Costner (Earp), Dennis Quaid (Doc), and Jeff Fahey (Ike Clanton) along with a host of women who played the Earp extended family. We even had Gene Hackman in a cameo as the father.So how does this film stack up with the others. For my tastes, the best Earp was Hugh O'Brien on the TV series, followed by Kurt Russell ("Tombstone") whom I think was the more realistic Earp. Val Kilmer is my favorite Doc Holiday, though I am partial to TV's Douglas Fawley. For villains, no one was as despicable as Walter Brennan ("My Darling Clementine") although Powers Boothe ("Tombstone") came close and I was also fond of Michael Biehn ("Tombstone"). The best coward was surely Dennis Hopper ("Gunfight at OK Corrall").In my mind, "Hour of the Gun" is the weakest of the telling of the Earp tale.

Oh we do love our westerns, do we not? So many fine, articulate reviews posted for this installment of the Wyatt Earp legend. As it happens I am currently accumulating a collection of two great -almost mythological- stories that are told again and again on celluloid; the saga of Wyatt Earp, and Alice in Wonderland.Although Wyatt and Alice may seem to occupy disparate niches in the archives of story telling, I propose that they are similar in that each tale acts as something of a template -or even an archetype- from which various interpretations of the core story can be rendered. It seems somehow OK that liberties have been taken with the exact way the events, either in reality or in the mind of the author, originally occurred in either story. The concepts of good, evil, morality, the impetus to do the right thing (The Wyatt Earp story), as well as the need to make sense of our dreams where the logic and proportion so often fall away… are foundational to the human experience. To tell the story of Wyatt Earp or Alice in Wonderland with the characters and events re-imagined by the current story teller allows us to examine these same core concepts through the fresh perspective of an individual's own interpretation.In Hour of the Gun, it seems that director John Sturges is asking us to compare the morality of the two key players; Wyatt Earp and Ike Clanton. Such a comparison is of course done with regularity, but in this case we have the events as they are laid out by Sturges to judge. For example, in this telling of the story Earp kills Clanton. We know it did not actually go down this way, but let's take this version at face value and see where it leads us.It occurs to me that we are being asked whether Wyatt and Ike are in essence the same man. Ike Clanton is described not as a mindless killer, but rather a man with a goal --rule the world he is creating on his own terms, free of the interference of the Easterners. Clanton would prefer to work within the "law" ("if this were back east I could make law the way they do"), but in the end Clanton is willing to use death and violence to reach his goal.It is the same with Wyatt Earp, is it not? Wyatt generally works within the law. He's even willing to 'make law', such as prohibiting the carrying of firearms within city limits. But once the blood of his kin is in play, Wyatt forms up a goal that becomes more important than the moral code he has been living by. Still, he attempts to work within the framework of the law. He stretches his morality to the very brink when he goads his adversaries into drawing down on him. Yet even near the end, when he and Doc track down Ike Clanton in Mexico, Wyatt at first tries to work with the local authorities to apprehend Clanton. Only when the witnesses are killed and there's no chance of a trial to see justice done does Earp -for the first time really- step completely outside the law.So, is Mr. Sturges telling us that when push came to shove Wyatt and Ike were exactly alike? And perhaps by inference, that all humans, under the right circumstances, will sacrifice their core beliefs… a juxtaposition of the old adage "Every man has his price"?No. I don't think so. Hour of the Gun leaves intact a key difference between Ike Clanton's actions and the actions of Wyatt Earp. Ike was willing to sacrifice the lives of innocent people to reach his goal. He appears to care nothing of either the loss of his own brother or the deaths he sponsored of the innocents who would testify against him.Sturges's Wyatt does not go that far. Even when Earp tricks his adversaries into gun-play over arrest, the argument can be made he did so because there was no hope of a fair trial. To support that idea we have Doc Holliday's line; "You couldn't get a conviction in a Federal court or a local one…". And Wyatt never killed an innocent man to get to the men guilty of assaulting his brothers. For Wyatt Earp, blood was thicker than law, but even then he did not place himself above the law out of pure self-interest. Vengeance carried out in the name of another rises a few clicks above that. And when Wyatt 'made law' it was for the common good.Therein lies the difference, and I would insert that when asked how this tale of the Old West applies in modern life I would suggest that sometimes men, standing in judgment of one another, don't always take this further step of looking beyond a person's actions to their core motivations.Of course at then end of the day every film that tells the Wyatt Earp saga, from Frontier Marshall in 1934 to Wyatt Earp's Revenge in 2012, begs the question; What would be the right thing to do in such circumstances? What would YOU do?

There must have been 20 actors or more playing Wyatt Earp. The first one I saw was Richard Dix "Tombstone, the town too tough to Die", then Randolph Scott Frontier Marshal, and many to follow. A lot of recent movies indicate that Virgil and Morgan were shot the same night, when actually Virgil was December 1881, and Morgan killed three months later in March. In this movie with James Garner, I noticed there was no mention of Sheriff Johnny Behan, a large character in the true story. Also Wyatt did not kill Ike Clanton and it showed at the end of the movie. From my info Ike was killed rustling cattle years later after Wyatt had left Tombstone for good. The character Doc and Wyatt were alway played by older men, actually Wyatt was 33 at the time and Doc was about 35. The best one was Bruce Boxleitner "I married Whatt Earp". Also there was no mention of any women, Mattie Earp, Josephine Marcus Earp, Allie Earp (Virgil's wife) or Big Nose Kate Elder. A lot was left out.