The Quick and the Dead (1995)

A female gunfighter returns to a frontier town where a dueling tournament is being held, which she enters in an effort to avenge her father's death.

Director:

Sam Raimi

Writer:

Simon Moore

Stars:

Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Sharon Stone	...	Ellen
Gene Hackman	...	Herod
Russell Crowe	...	Cort
Leonardo DiCaprio	...	Kid
Tobin Bell	...	Dog Kelly
Roberts Blossom	...	Doc Wallace
Kevin Conway	...	Eugene Dred
Keith David	...	Sgt. Cantrell
Lance Henriksen	...	Ace Hanlon
Pat Hingle	...	Horace the Bartender
Gary Sinise	...	Marshall
Mark Boone Junior	...	Scars
Olivia Burnette	...	Katie
Fay Masterson	...	Mattie Silk
Raynor Scheine	...	Ratsy

Storyline

Ellen, an unknown female gunslinger rides into a small, dingy and depressing prairie town with a secret as to her reason for showing up. Shortly after her arrival, a local preacher, Cort, is thrown through the saloon doors while townfolk are signing up for a gun competition. The pot is a huge sum of money and the only rule: that you follow the rules of the man that set up the contest, Herod. Herod is also the owner, leader, and "ruler" of the town. Seems he's arranged this little gun-show-off so that the preacher (who use to be an outlaw and rode with Herod) will have to fight again. Cort refuses to ever use a gun to kill again and Herod, acknowledging Cort as one of the best, is determined to alter this line of thinking ... even if it gets someone killed ...

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Plot Keywords:

street shootout | showdown | gun duel | saved from hanging | girl power | 

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Taglines:

You can't ignore her. You can't beat her. You can't resist her. You can't win...

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Genres:

Action | Romance | Thriller | Western

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for western violence

Details

Country:

Japan USA

Language:

English Spanish

Release Date:

10 February 1995 (USA)

Also Known As:

Rápida y mortal

Filming Locations:

USA

Box Office

Budget:

$32,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$6,515,861, 12 February 1995, Wide Release

Gross USA:

$18,636,537

Company Credits

Production Co:

TriStar Pictures, Japan Satellite Broadcasting (JBS), IndieProd Company Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

107 min

Sound Mix:

SDDS (8 channels) Dolby Digital

Color:

Black and White Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

A sex scene between Ellen and Cort was shot, but Sharon Stone and director Sam Raimi decided that it wasn't a necessary part of the story. The scene was not included in the American release of the film, but the international version does.

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Goofs

About sixty-three minutes into the picture, when Herod has the duel with Sargent Cantrell, we're shown Herod firing his weapon at Cantrell's head and when the bullet hits Cantrell, suddenly there's a huge hole that appears all the way through the Sargent's head, and it is about the size of an egg: perhaps four inches or so, diametrically. Such a large wound would be impossible with such a small caliber weapon as Herod was characterized as having used in the scene.

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Quotes

Kid: I'm so damned fast I can wake up at the crack of dawn, rob two banks, a train and a stage coach, shoot the tail feathers off a duck's ass at 300 feet, and still be back in bed before you wake up next to me.

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Connections

Spoofed in Rango (2011)

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Soundtracks

Un Mexicano En El Norte
Written by Demetrio Farias
Performed by El Mariachi Tepalcatepec De Michoacan
Courtesy of Discos Dos Coronas
(A Division of Two Crowns International Inc.)

User Reviews

Exaggerated, intense, beautiful, silly

Like all of Sam Raimi's movies, this flick was a cartoon. That's not an insult- his works with the Coen brothers on movies like The Hudsucker Proxy are some of my favorites, with their insanely "zoomed-in" quality. This movie was a spaghetti western, it was ABOUT spaghetti westerns, and it was also a weird, wonderful nightmare where your options are limited, you're a superhero, and your enemy is all-powerful. That's adolescent, silly, and totally compelling.

Raimi has always done brilliant visuals; I don't know his history, but I suspect he read a lot of pulp comics as a kid. The early scene where Stone gets up (after playing dead) and you see her shadow putting her hat back on, with the obvious bullet hole in the brim, is sheer visual brilliance.

Gene Hackman is, of course, great (MST3K line: "He's good in everything!"). Sharon Stone has gotten a lot of static for doing what Clint Eastwood built a legend on: bad acting, done intensely. (And in Stone's case in this flick, I think, purposefully.) Leonardo D. is well-cast as a cocky, yet needy, "bad-a** in his own mind" type. Russell Crowe (who nobody knew at the time, especially me) is great in his role as a survivor of a 12-step program to help fight a dependence on violence, complete with backsliding moments.

Do not look to this movie expecting anything like realism, believability, or moderation. This is pulp fiction, eye candy, nightmare surrealism, wanton entertainment. It's trash culture saluting trash culture, and if you can appreciate that, it's a hell of a great ride.