Tombstone (1993)

Tombstone represents another major uptick in Kilmer's popular success. He plays the wild west legend and dentist known as Doc Holliday. While most of the actual facts of Doc Holiday's life have been accentuated by old West legend, it is established that he was a drunk, a gambler, suffered from consumption (that's tuberculosis for the uninitiated) and took part in a massive revenge killing spree initiated by the Earp family.



The movie Tombstone tells the tale of the former old West lawmen of the Earp family (Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan) settling down with their wives in Tombstone, Arizona. The Earps plan on striking it rich by basically extorting a healthy share of the profits out of a local casino by using their reputations for western machismo to provide protection. Doc Holiday (Kilmer) rides into town with his prostitute looking girlfriend and proceeds to be sweaty and pale all the time and say mildly rude things to the gang of toughs known as "The Cowboys." He's basically a fading Southern dandy. This forces Holiday's old friend Wyatt Earp to take his back and puts everyone into confrontation with The Cowboys... who are known for wearing fancy red sashes around their waste like some sort of gringo matadors. Seriously, Kilmer has never looked paler or sweatier:


I had originally seen Tombstone quite a while ago and seemed to remember it as a story of pure good guys (The Earps) faced against pure evil (the Cowboys). It's really a very morally gray movie. The Earps are siphoning off their money from an casino/bar that they just ran into and demanded a share of the profits. Their vigilantism, allbeit well intentioned, essentially sets of reciprical violence between the two groups. And when one of the Earps gets killed... oops... spoiler alert- the murder spree that they conduct is just brutal. They set about hunting down these Cowboys in what is basically a "The Most Dangerous Game" type killing spree. Can nothing satiate Kirk Russell's mad bloodlust?!

The leader of the Cowboys, Curly Bill, is played by Powers Boothe (stage name? probably), who went on to play Cy Tolliver in the awesome Deadwood series on HBO:



Tombstone was a mega-hit that capped off a glut of mid 90s wild west movies. This was a huge win for Kilmer who continued his string of vigilante heroes soon after this with his most memorable (and possibly worst) role... Batman. As memorably said by Doc Holiday, "I have not yet begun to defile myself."