Hickok

The best film I've seen done on Wild Bill Hickok is White Buffalo where Charles Bronson played the legendary frontier marshal. It was set at a different time and place during his life. This film Hickok is set at the beginning showing some of his Civil War service and the beginning of his time as marshal of Abilene.

Unlike Wyatt Earp who rarely used his weapon and before the OK Corral business had only killed one man, Hickok was as fast as rumored and had a few kills listed to him. That's what is shown here. Luke Hemsworth who plays Hickok also carries a shotgun as most peace officers did. What counted was to make sure hit your target. He has quite the standoff with John Wesley Hardin who in real life never made it as far north as Kansas. He certainly wasn't Hickok's deputy. Hardin is played here by Kaiwi Lyman-Mesereau.

The film moves at a tortoise pace attributable to some bad direction and the characters never engage you the way the cast in the Bronson film did. Having such veterans as Kris Kristofferson and Bruce Dern help a bit. But this is not the final cinematic word on Wild Bill Hickok.

Wild Bill Hickok (Luke Helmsworth) comes to Abilene, a western cow town that needs taming and Mayor Knox (Kris Kristofferson) makes him the Marshall.

This is somewhat disappointing because there are good acting scenes and poorly acted scenes. You decide how correct I am. The scenes with Hickok and Dr. O'Rourke ( Bruce Dern) were very good; and also the dialogues between Hickok and Mayor Knox were spot on; and I even liked the banter between Hickok and John Wesley Hardin (Kaiwi Lyman-Mersereau). All the rest of the scenes and dialogues were not as good, but the talks between Hickok and Mattie (Cameron Richardson) his love interest were okay. Trace Atkins is okay as Poe, the owner of the saloon. He originally likes Hickok, but after Hickok affects his business by not allowing guns in town, he does everything to have his boys kill Hickok.

Was I looking for a shoot-out between Hickok and John Wesley Hardin? Of course. Checking with Wikipedia we see that Hickok and John Wesley Hardin did know each other and when Hickok told Hardin to turn in his guns, he did. But in the movie he didn't. In the movie, Hickok made him a Deputy Marshall.

Yes, Hickok does pretend that John Wesley Hardin is not John Wesley Harden for if he was, then Hickok would have to arrest him because Hardin is a wanted man. Interesting take here.

Was this a really good western? No. A lot of stuff needed work, mostly quicker responses from the players at times. Let me say this: if the bad guys were better bad guys, then this may have saved the movie. Didn't happen. For example, the bad guys shoot into a cabin where Hickok and Mattie are and throw a stick of dynamite into the cabin. Hickok tosses it outside, but the bad guys think they killed Hickok and didn't check. See? This was just one small example.

Also I kept hearing that this was Drover town, but I didn't see one cow. A Drover is someone who drives cows to market. We should have seen at least one cow. Bummer.

A sort of interesting aside: I noticed most players wore their guns in not the usual place on their hips.

All in all this was watchable, and yes, somewhat disappointing, too, and we wished it was better. (5/10)

Violence: Yes. Sex: No. Nudity: Yes, almost when Hickok and Mattie get together. Language: Small stuff and not much of it.

Western movies is not usually within my preferred genre of movies to sit down to watch, but I was given the chance to watch this.

And I must admit that I was a little bit intrigued as I saw that Kris Kristofferson was on the cast list. But it turned out that he had only a minor role in the movie.

The storyline was entertaining, for sure, although it suffered from being generic and predictable. There certainly was a good flow to the movie, and good progression in the storyline, so you never felt that the movie came to a halt.

The acting in the movie was good, and the actors and actresses were putting in good efforts to bring their characters to life on the screen.

But somehow I sit here with a feeling of 'was that really it?' now that I have watched the movie.

Surely this movie is one for true fans of the old classic western genre.

I liked this movie for the simple reason it was a western. While not spectacular, the show was still okay for late night viewing. Critics here giving 2's are not being fair with their overall assessment.

I am a fan of well done, action packed Westerns but this movie fails to deliver any exciting or believable fight scenes. The gun play sequences are poorly paced and not very believable and the transitions between scenes are awkward. The worst flaw was the lack of continuity between scenes. A young boy is shot in the right leg and we watch as the bullet is removed by a half drunken doctor but in a scene five minutes later, the boy is shown sitting with a bandaged LEFT leg, only to be shown later with an injured right leg again. Overall this was a promising movie that did not live up to my expectations.