Wyatt Earp Details

Not every film in the western revival of the early 1990s was on a par with the Oscar-winning Dances with Wolves and Unforgiven. This TV movie is an ill-conceived attempt to wring the last drop out of The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp series that ran for an amazing number of episodes on American TV between 1955 and 1961, and uses colourised clips from the black-and-white original. Hugh O'Brian returns in the role that made his name, searching for a gravestone inscription and confronting a cocky young sureshot. He pluckily attempts to roll back the years, but the story would have worked better as one of the original half-hour shows.

Over-solemn retelling of a story familiar from many other Westerns, though never before at this length or detail. Moments of tedium are inevitable, and after a revisionist beginning the film finally settles for a celebration of a mythic hero, with Costner