The Quick and the Dead: Critic Reviews

Mr. 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.

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.

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...

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.

What 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.

Rarely 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.

Sam 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.

Sam 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.

Raimi's movie borrows heavily from classic spaghetti westerns, but Raimi has a style of his own, and plenty of it.

A deadpan black comedy, Sam Raimi's fast-paced movie looks and sounds like a Leone oater but more so.

Sharon Stone misses the mark on this one.

Raimi's gimmicky but endlessly inventive direction gives it plenty of gas, and the excellent cast takes it the rest of the way.

Stylish Raimi western is violent, unpredictable.

See it for yourself - surprising

Awesome western. Raimi's technique heightens the standard gunfight drama.