Wild Bill

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.

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.

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.

Lazy, terrible script, one dimentional characters, flat and boring. Exactly the same kind of stupidity yyou find in series like CSI and similar garbage.

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.