Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Stephan Hammond It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Mr-Fusion An odd movie, "Wild Bill". I reconciling the legend with the man (especially one who's on the downslope of life), there's plenty of backstory to fill in. And the way it bounces around between flashback and present day gives the movie a fairly schizophrenic vibe. On one hand, you kinda wish there was more running time to this just to handle all of the history - but on the other hand, the movie has its own pacing issues after the first 30 minutes or so. Maybe excitement just wasn't in the cards for this one.Putting aside the weakness of David Arquette, the movie boasts a solid cast (with Jeff Bridges as the standout). It's a decent western and the shootouts are classic Walter Hill.6/10

morrison-dylan-fan Finding out about him after seeing the Pop-Art comic-book stylisation of The Warriors,I was surprised to find Walter Hill be very involved in the making of HBO's magnificent Western series Deadwood. Directing the pilot,Hill gave the ep a rawness which was expanded over the next 3 seasons. Taking a look at what movies were about to go from Netflix UK,I spotted a Hill title I've not heard anything about before,which led to me getting set to meet Wild Bill.The plot:Attending his funeral, Charley Prince starts to think about the "difficult" friendship he had with "Wild" Bill Hickok.The past:Getting on everyone's hit-list,"Wild" Bill Hickok leaves undercover to the outlaw town of Deadwood.Viewed as a mythical cowboy,Hickok plays up to the image as he joins friends such as Charley Prince passing the time drinking.Becoming recently reunited with Calamity Jane, Hickok learns that he has an illegitimate son,who is just as much an outlaw as his old man.View on the film:Spinning the guns to black and white flashbacks that Hickok has half-drunk memories of,writer/director Walter Hill and cinematographer Lloyd Ahern II give the flashbacks a poetic calm in in unveiling the events which led to the "code" Hickok lives by. Sharply contrasting the smoothness of the flashbacks,Hill and Ahern give the present an earthy,gritty atmosphere. Setting the sun down on the Wild West with Hickok's face covering the screen,Hill pours mud and dry dirt into the tensions of the West,which ignites in a fury of red and white dust being scatted across the screen as Hickok hands a short.sharp shock of a shootout out.Visibly appearing to "tense" on screen, (with Hill saying that there was always some "tension" between them) Jeff Bridges channels this unease into a very good performance as Hickok,who displays flashes of his myth making bombast,but is wonderfully pinned by Bridges with a suspicion that his "code" is fading with the sun. Opening this adaptation of Peter Dexter's book & Thomas Babe's play with Hickok's funeral,Hill aims for the murky back-shooting of the Wild West with the elegance of the bio-pic. Inter-cutting between the past and the present,Hill struggles to keep the distinctive atmospheres at an even level,with the tough bite of Hickok's last days of living by his "code" being cooled down by the calmer,more withheld flashbacks,which leads to this being a far from "Wild" kill(ed) Bill.

FlashCallahan Wild Bill Hickok, famed lawman and gunman of the Old West, is haunted by his past and his reputation.He is loved by, but cannot love, Calamity Jane.Dogging his trail is young Jack McCall, who blames Bill for abandoning the boy's mother and destroying her life.McCall has sworn to kill Bill, and Bill's ghosts, his failing eyesight, and his fondness for opium may make McCall's task easier....One of the main reasons to watch this film is of course Bridges, who puts in a wonderful performance as the titular character. He is ably supported by Barkin and Hurt, and thats most of the positive things said.The film is shot beautifully, and does have an authentic feel to it, but Hill feels out of place directing this, and has made some evry odd choices with the uses of flashbacks, and using Arquette, who is not convincing, but you know the demise of Bill when you meet arquettes character.Reason being that the man is too slimy and typically evil in a Mike Myers way (not a compliment) and is the sole reason of making the film just that laughable. Sure, the history is a load of garbage, but that doesn't matter, all we want to know is how many people he shot, how drunk he got, and how well Bridges does to adapt the two aforementioned traits.it's watchable enough, with some silly scenes and misjudged narrative, but thanks to some good performances, the film isn't the turkey most say it is.

Samiam3 Perhaps I love Deadwood too much; the critically praised, HBO series for which director Walter Hill appropriately won an Emmy for the pilot. I clearly set my expectations a little too high of this one, which predates the Deadwood series by eight years or so. Coming from Walter Hill, the man behind the Warriors and The Long Riders, there is no way that Wild Bill should have been this sloppy. His portrayal of the life and death of James Butler Hickok results in a motion picture that self-destructs in spectacular fashion. It is vastly underwritten, poorly acted, edited as if it were a labyrinth of jungle vines to be cut down by a machete, and on top of that the movie is also severely anti-climactic.All that Hill gets right is that parts of the movie are well shot, and he is able to capture the look of the times on screen, but on the pages, it is a different matter. The opening twenty minutes (give or take) are especially excruciating. What we see is almost a joke, totally amateurish and more oriented towards obnoxious gunplay than character illumination. I felt like I was watching kiddies play cowboys and Indians on the street with little wooden pistols. Jeff Bridges portrayal of Hickok is devoid of talent and humanity. It is so obviously a performance, with hammy delivery, poor timing, and failure to capture Bill's misery and self loathing and his love for Calamity Jane.When all is said and done, Wild Bill is a dud. It is clumsy and careless, and is easily one of the worst westerns I have ever seen.