Sam Raimi’s Fantastic and Dynamic Western: The Quick and the Dead (1995)

I find myself becoming more intrigued by Sam Raimi the older I get. I’m not yet a complete connoisseur as I’m still missing the viewing of some of his mid-period work, but I have seen all his Evil Dead films and every film he’s directed this side of 2000. He strikes me as a director whose mantra is “Let’s make this look as fun and cool as humanly possible,” but never in a cynical way. Even at his most mainstream, he has a very nerdy sensibility i.e. we can have a normal superhero battle in Multiverse of Madness, or we can have two Doctor Stranges fighting each other with musical notes and eyes popping out everywhere. We can have a bog-standard exorcism in Drag Me To Hell, or we can watch what happens when an evil soul possesses a goat. 

With all that said, it’s really sad that Raimi is tied down to two areas in pop culture. He’s either ‘the Spiderman guy’ or ‘the Evil Dead guy’ depending on who you talk to. All of these films are great (yes I said all of them, Spiderman 3 is a good movie and I will die on this hill), but with a filmmaking style as he has, what’s even more fun is watching him show off his versatility. We’ve seen him do Disney-style fantasy in Oz The Great And Powerful, and even blend his most well-known genres of superhero and horror with Darkman and, most recently, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. However, for today, we’re finding out what happens when you stick Sam Raimi’s dynamic style in the middle of a Wild West town. Answer: a bloody fun Western.

The Quick and the Dead is so much fun to watch. How much of that is Raimi’s doing I don’t know, but his dynamic directorial flourishes are certainly a contributing factor. The constant zoom-ins and whip-pans always retain your attention and keep the pace quick and steady. The shoot-outs are always engaging too, and he gets a lot of variety out of simple setups such as people drawing and shooting as quickly as possible. Raimi himself apparently has mixed feelings about the film and was quoted as saying that he felt like “a dinosaur since his visual style wasn’t changing along with the genre shifts”. However, that’s the precise reason why The Quick and the Dead works, because you can tell that this is the same man who directed the iconic ‘laughing scene’ in Evil Dead II, which further exemplifies why Raimi is such a solid director: he’s malleable with genre but consistent in his bag of tricks. 

Lead actress Sharon Stone played a large part in the film’s development – as co-producer, she had approval over the choice of director, and allegedly threatened to not star in the film if Sam Raimi wasn’t chosen. An interesting point to raise here is also why she wanted Raimi to direct, believing that the script would ‘stretch the limits of his technical and creative ability.’ Therefore, if Stone’s judgement had been wrong, then the film would have flopped and we might not have seen Raimi dipping his toes into other genres such as mainstream superhero or fantasy, which shows how important The Quick and the Dead was in demonstrating Raimi’s versatility. 

Stone herself, her lead character is fantastic. In a genre dominated by strong mysterious male figures where conflicts focus on male authority figures and women are relegated to mistresses and barmaids, it feels very liberating to see a headstrong female lead who captures the attention of those around her and manages to beat the man who killed her father. She is also rewarded with a great deal of depth and emotional nuance, not only with her tragic backstory but with the empathy she feels towards Russell Crowe’s Cort and Leonardo Dicaprio’s The Kid. 

For one, it is quite amazing to see pre-Titanic DiCaprio and pre-Gladiator Russell Crowe in the same film together, neither actor having had their big break yet. Both characters are opposites – the cocky, exuberant daredevil Kid thirsty to prove himself balances off against Crowe’s stoic pacifist. Cort’s turn to religion and his denouncing of violence makes him the target of much ridicule by the townsfolk, and this results in some great small bonding moments between Stone and Crowe. 

Likewise, DiCaprio proves the amount of range he will go on to show this early in his career. Underneath the carefree bouncy persona lies a character determined for approval from the town ruler Herod, who he believes to be his father. The Kid’s death scene is perhaps the most emotionally affecting moment in this film, as this young man pleads for release and Herod refuses to acknowledge him. Not only does it make Herod seem even more evil, but it adds so much more pathos to a film that is much richer in detail than it seems on the surface.

The plot itself seems quite thin initially. The idea of a shooting tournament is one of those ‘heavy on style, light on substance’ ideas, which we already knew Raimi was good at, as style was always the dominant driving force of the Evil Dead films which barely hang together when you look at them from a script standpoint. Despite this, The Quick and the Dead reveals itself to be very rich thematically the more it opens, and demonstrates how well Raimi can execute a deeper, more layered story. The backstory of Stone’s character is very much in the shadows at the film’s beginning, and the revealing flashbacks work wonders in filling in the blanks as the film progresses. Plus, it helps the film’s finale feel incredibly cathartic as a viewer.  

Gene Hackman also proves to be a fantastic main villain. We know that his intentions are somewhat dubious straight from the get-go, but the way in which the flashbacks serve to make him even more of a villain than he’s made out to be, makes that climax feel incredibly tense. You want Sharon Stone’s lead to triumph but you also know how formidable and scheming Herod is. Cold and calm villains can serve to provide menace, but I always gravitate towards villains that are deliciously evil, and Herod is exactly that.

This is somehow the only thing I’ve seen Gene Hackman in, but this is a great first impression of his talents even in one of his later-period roles. Edit: this writer would like to make readers aware that he does have foreknowledge of Gene Hackman’s role as Lex Luthor in the Christopher Reeve Superman films, but since the only clips he has seen of those films are from Youtube videos laughing at the ineptitude of Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, he decided to keep his mouth shut.

Therefore, if you want a fun and exciting Western with some cool subversions of the formula and a great visual style, Raimi has you covered with The Quick and The Dead. I aim to do more reviews of Raimi’s work but for now, go and watch this film. Even if you’re like me and not a Western aficionado, I promise you’ll enjoy it. No matter what film he’s making, you can always count on Sam Raimi to be Sam Raimi. 

Alex’s Archive: The Quick and the Dead (1995)