Wild Bill

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.

This had so much historical fodder for storytelling and they did this. The writing was terrible, the direction worse, and many of the actors seemed to be just phoning it in fora paycheck.

The most sad thing of this had to be Kris Kristofferson who seemed to be reading from a slow loading dialogue delivery system of some sort. The only actors that did well were those with few paychecks behind them.

Action and SFX were beyond poor and the entire film was a train wreck in that you can't stop watching to see if it can get any worse.

Kris and Bruce? It's time to retire. You had great runs but it has gotten down to the point that peeps might think you just don't give a shot anymore. Loved you both in your earlier stuff.

The dubious factual integrity of this tale of Wild Bill Hickok's tenure as the Sheriff of Abilene does nothing to enhance what is a stubbornly ordinary saga, despite the efforts of a decent cast. Liam, the older, arguably least successful, of the Hemsworth brothers works hard in the title role, and receives solid support from Trace Adkins, Bruce Dern and Kris Kristofferson, but the plot never really engages and Timothy Woodward Jr's direction lacks imagination.

Disappointing is a word I would normally use when discovering a below par movie, but I did not expect much from this movie to begin with so the bar was set quiet low in my expectation. Somehow the director managed to lower that bar considerably. Terrible direction, no style of any kind whatsoever.. terrible sound editing,, a gunshot sounds like someone farted loudly.. awfully clichéd dialogue, wooden acting at its worst, lighting was poor, cinematography was childlike and vacuous,. This was a calamitous endeavour from start to finish. Watch it only to learn how not to make a western.

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.