More than the actual story itself, what intrigued me about this picture was the way it mashed together historical elements at the turn of the silent era in Hollywood. At the time, Tom Mix was a genuine movie legend, and he lived a lavish lifestyle that the picture barely touches on. The story references Mix as having made his last silent film, and he's about to appear in a picture about the Gunfight at the OK Corral, on which Wyatt Earp has been called in to be a technical adviser. In real life, Earp did become friends with Tom Mix and another veteran silent film star, William S. Hart.
The setting for the film is 1929 with the very first year of the Academy Awards serving as a backdrop to the murder mystery at the center of the story. The event was held on May 16th, and Earp was already deceased for four months. It's unlikely an eighty year old Earp would have been running around Los Angeles getting involved with crooked cops and hookers, though I wouldn't put it past Mix. Even so, Mix would have been fifty himself, and it was getting harder with each passing year to get up on a horse.
As cowboy star Tom Mix, Bruce Willis gets to wear some outrageously colorful outfits and drive some of the best looking vintage vehicles I've ever seen. Mix had a free spending lifestyle, and Willis's reference in the picture to owning sixteen cars was probably pretty close to the mark. Content with portraying Mix as a rather hip and fashionable playboy, no mention is made that he was married five times in real life. Just as well, it wouldn't have worked for the story at all.
For his part, James Garner does a competent job as former marshal Wyatt Earp, now a private citizen and working as a consultant in Hollywood. I like Garner, and if you're going for a buddy team-up, the chemistry between himself and Willis is enjoyable. However the script calls for an affable Earp, and from what I've read about the real life lawman, Garner's portrayal seems out of character here. Which is OK, just not very believable. But we already established that.
The main villain of the piece is portrayed by Malcolm McDowell in a thinly based caricature of Charlie Chaplin. A number of reviewers on this board opine on why director Edwards would have tarnished Chaplin's reputation with such an obvious parody (Happy Hobo/Little Tramp). It may simply have been a way to include another Academy 'first' in the proceedings. Chaplin was honored that year with a special award for his all around contribution to producing "The Circus".
Another reviewer puzzles over the title of the movie. Personally, having seen hundreds of TV and movie Westerns, it's probably a convenient way to memorialize just about every B oater in which the cowboy star gets the girl at the end of the picture and rides off into the proverbial sunset. But then again, in researching the first Academy gathering in 1929, one learns that the Best Picture winner for 'Unique and Artistic Production' went to Fox Studio's "Sunrise". So if this was another overt accolade to the original Oscars, it was cleverly done.
I guess I'd like to close out by mentioning one more bit of trivia regarding Tom Mix and Wyatt Earp. The last surviving brother of the infamous Gunfight at the OK Corral died on January 13th, 1929. His pallbearers were all prominent men from Los Angeles and Hollywood, including friends William S. Hart and Tom Mix. Newspaper accounts of the occasion state that Mix cried at the funeral.
The setting for the film is 1929 with the very first year of the Academy Awards serving as a backdrop to the murder mystery at the center of the story. The event was held on May 16th, and Earp was already deceased for four months. It's unlikely an eighty year old Earp would have been running around Los Angeles getting involved with crooked cops and hookers, though I wouldn't put it past Mix. Even so, Mix would have been fifty himself, and it was getting harder with each passing year to get up on a horse.
As cowboy star Tom Mix, Bruce Willis gets to wear some outrageously colorful outfits and drive some of the best looking vintage vehicles I've ever seen. Mix had a free spending lifestyle, and Willis's reference in the picture to owning sixteen cars was probably pretty close to the mark. Content with portraying Mix as a rather hip and fashionable playboy, no mention is made that he was married five times in real life. Just as well, it wouldn't have worked for the story at all.
For his part, James Garner does a competent job as former marshal Wyatt Earp, now a private citizen and working as a consultant in Hollywood. I like Garner, and if you're going for a buddy team-up, the chemistry between himself and Willis is enjoyable. However the script calls for an affable Earp, and from what I've read about the real life lawman, Garner's portrayal seems out of character here. Which is OK, just not very believable. But we already established that.
The main villain of the piece is portrayed by Malcolm McDowell in a thinly based caricature of Charlie Chaplin. A number of reviewers on this board opine on why director Edwards would have tarnished Chaplin's reputation with such an obvious parody (Happy Hobo/Little Tramp). It may simply have been a way to include another Academy 'first' in the proceedings. Chaplin was honored that year with a special award for his all around contribution to producing "The Circus".
Another reviewer puzzles over the title of the movie. Personally, having seen hundreds of TV and movie Westerns, it's probably a convenient way to memorialize just about every B oater in which the cowboy star gets the girl at the end of the picture and rides off into the proverbial sunset. But then again, in researching the first Academy gathering in 1929, one learns that the Best Picture winner for 'Unique and Artistic Production' went to Fox Studio's "Sunrise". So if this was another overt accolade to the original Oscars, it was cleverly done.
I guess I'd like to close out by mentioning one more bit of trivia regarding Tom Mix and Wyatt Earp. The last surviving brother of the infamous Gunfight at the OK Corral died on January 13th, 1929. His pallbearers were all prominent men from Los Angeles and Hollywood, including friends William S. Hart and Tom Mix. Newspaper accounts of the occasion state that Mix cried at the funeral.