Well, howdy partner, and welcome in to the review of Sam Raimi’s gloriously weird western, The Quick and the Dead. Sharon Stone struts into town in a leather duster and an I'm Batman speaking voice, Leonardo DiCaprio is playing “Kid” before he was The Kid, Gene Hackman is Lex Luthor in a duster, and Russell Crowe is inexplicably a pacifist preacher with a deadly draw.
This movie is part spaghetti western, part comic-book splash page, and all Raimi—complete with crash zooms, Dutch angles, and a camera shot that literally goes through a bullet hole. We’ll talk about how Sharon Stone hand-picked her co-stars (and gave DiCaprio his big break), why the duels feel like Mortal Kombat fatalities, and how this flick deserves way more love than it got back in the day.
