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As the title implies, Tombstone concerns itself with the segment of Earp's life when he and his brothers, Virgil and Morgan (played ably by the grizzled Sam Elliott and Bill Paxton, respectively), and their gambling friend Doc Holiday (a pale-faced Val Kilmer) have moved to the boomtown of Tombstone Arizona with the idea of striking it rich. Of course this is a prelude to the brothers returning to law enforcement in an effort to clean up the town they live in. The film then focuses on the Earp brothers' blood feud with a group of outlaws called "The Cowboys," which leads to the infamous gunfight at the OK corral, and a series of avenging shootings between the feuding clans that follow.

Like so many action movies, this one's success is made with the flair of its director with the action and gunfights, and in the performances of its stars. And there are so many stars in this movie! Kurt Russell does solid work as the snarling and intimidating Wyatt Earp. Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, and Stephen Lang are all fiendishly terrific as the red-sash wearing, evil "cowboys." Dana Delany is cute and tolerable as Earp's love interest. Jason Priestley and Billy Zane have bit parts in a bizarre and unnecessary homosexual subplot that's apparently included for comic relief. Robert Mitchum narrates the film, and Charlton Heston even has a small role - isn't this a hell of a lot of star power for what is essentially a B-movie action-Western? But the show is stolen by the wisecracking Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday, whose every line is written and delivered superbly, save for an idiotic exchange of threats in Latin between his tubercular Holiday and another Michael Biehn's Johnny Ringo.

For this Vista Series DVD scenes previously deleted from the film (and shown on the laserdisc of several years ago) have been restored and edited back into the film. In spite of the director's claims that these scenes "provide plot points and character development important to the story" I didn't feel they added anything critical. But they're short, so what the heck. In any case, this is a mostly brisk, and action-packed Western that I've always enjoyed and am happy to have as a 2-Disc Special Edition DVD.

Video: How Does The Disc Look?

Tombstone has received a brand new, THX- certified anamorphic widescreen transfer that is presented at approximately 2.35:1. Two things are immediately apparent upon watching the opening scene : 1) that the new transfer is head and shoulders improved over the previous non-anamorphic widescreen DVD, revealing a much sharper, more detailed and three-dimensional image, but 2) this new transfer is waaaay too sharp, showing the grossest amount of edge enhancement I've seen in recent memory. This DVD is a real black eye for the folks at THX, who have apparently approved this new transfer in spite of the fact that nearly every scene contains an obscene amount of hard white "halos" on virtually every horizontal and vertical line or "edge" in the picture. I was constantly distracted by the presence of these artifacts, which are the worst I have seen yet on any DVD. How can THX possibly find this outrageous amount of edge enhancement artifacts acceptable? I actually feel sorry for Buena Vista, who has probably paid THX a lot of money to help them produce what is a seriously flawed video transfer.

On the plus side, the blacks are exceptionally deep, yet never crush any shadow detail, and the colors are spectacularly saturated but pure. While very detailed, the image also looks overly "hard" and digital, and less like film than most. While background detail appears solid with practically no pixelization, the overall image is like a TV with the sharpness control cranked way too high- real detail is obscured by the excessive amount of halos and ringing artifacts. While this transfer is obviously way too much of a good thing with respect to the sharpness f the image, it is still better than the original non-anamorphic widescreen DVD, which appeared sourced from the laserdisc master. It's just a shame because it appears that this new DVD could have been better still than it is.

Audio: How Does the Disc Sound?

The sound for Tombstone has been remastered and is presented in Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 channel surround (the only English soundtracks on the disc). Tombstone's soundtrack is incredibly dynamic with enveloping ambiance and aggressive split surrounds during the action sequences, and the DTS track is the better of the two. The crackling, stormy night during which the Earp brothers are attacked revealed terrific imaging along with a deep and powerful LFE presence that punctuates the sequence very effectively. There are a hell of a lot of gunfights in the movie, and the seemingly uncompressed dynamics and punchy LFE make these sequences more exciting and involving. I thought the soundtrack was always balanced and appropriately aggressive or subtle, depending on what was happening on screen. Dialog is generally well integrated with the rest of the soundtrack elements, and the score sounds terrific as well. This is a very solid effort overall.

Also included are English Captions, French and Spanish subtitles, and true English Closed Captions.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

Before getting into what's on Tombstone's two full DVDs, it should be said that this Vista Series DVD is packaged in a way that's stylish, elegant, and fun. It reminds me of the old day of laserdisc, in which the packaging was clearly put together to be a big part of the value to collectors. The set comes in a sepia-toned slipcover, with a thumb space pull out area designed to look like a bullet hole! Inside, the disc case itself folds out to reveal several layers of artwork, and the discs themselves are adorned with pictures as well. There are two inserts, one with the particulars of the disc set, and the other is reproduction of a map of downtown Tombstone (allegedly drawn by Wyatt Earp himself) including the OK Corral and the positions of the participants in the famous gunfight that occurred there. Kudos to Buena Vista on the packaging for this set, it's nifty!

Disc one's sole feature is a screen-specific audio commentary with director George P. Cosmatos. This track is engaging overall, if a bit hard to understand with the director's accent. I did enjoy it and his enthusiasm for the project, despite the fact that Cosmatos directed Rambo II and Cobra...

Disc two starts with The Making of Tombstone, a series of three EPK pieces that total nearly 26 minutes of footage. The interviews are very good, particularly with respect to actors like Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, and Powers Booth offering insights on their own characters, and the film in general. Frankly, it seems that a lot more went into this picture than meets the eye. The actors, director, and set designers all did a lot of research that was apparent in these interviews and on the screen.

The next feature on Disc two is the Tombstone Timeline, which is a narrated series of text screens with historical facts about the Earps and Tombstone. This is interesting, but I would have enjoyed it a bit more if the facts were correlated more directly to the movie. Along similar lines, and far more interesting is the feature entitled Tombstone Epitaph, after Tombstone's town newspaper. This has several long articles that actually appeared in that newspaper the day after the gunfight at the OK Corral, and which are full of actual eye witness testimony as to what happened there and who was at fault. I found this feature fascinating and well worth the time taken to read all the material.

The original storyboards for the gunfight at the OK Corral sequence are presented with music underscore for a nice 3- minute presentation. This is good to check out, particularly for any former or current film school students, though might have been improved had the current trend of presenting the storyboards and then following that with the actual filmed sequences or using the multi- angle feature to allow a direct comparison been followed. One can still do that manually by returning to disc one to watch the sequence, but that's hardly as effective as having them all part of the same feature on the same disc.

In addition to the theatrical trailer and teaser, there are no fewer than seven TV spots included. Further, if you scroll right from the Bonus Materials menu a highlighted badge reveals an "Easter egg" that when selected leads to an image gallery of poster art and set design sketches.

DVD-ROM Exclusives: What do you get when you pop the disc in your PC?

Not much here, only the Faro at the Oriental interactive game which is pretty simplistic but worth a few minutes of fun. The only additional ROM stuff is the custom Buena Vista interface and the usual assort of weblinks to related sites...

Parting Thoughts