The story of 'The Quick and the Dead' revolves around a gunslinger woman, Ellen, who does her best to avenge from father's murderer, Herod, who is the responsible for organizing a quick-draw tournament. She decides to join a deadly fight competition in order to kill Herod and take the revenge.
What Raimi can't find is a center. He hankers for us to giggle at the brutal archetypes he's parodying and to warm to them, too. It won't wash, pardner.
Mr. Raimi is limited by a sketch mentality, which means his jokes tend to be over long before his films end. But his tastes for visual mischief and crazy, ill-advised homage can still make for sly, sporadic fun.
Flipside Movie Emporium
September 02, 2005
Raimi's gimmicky but endlessly inventive direction gives it plenty of gas, and the excellent cast takes it the rest of the way.
ReelViews
January 01, 2000
Raimi's choice to give the film a comic book-like aura of mingled camp and grit makes for some fitfully energetic and entertaining moments, but it's not enough to overcome The Quick and the Dead's primary fault.
Rarely dull, it is not noticeably compelling either, and as the derivative offshoot of a derivative genre, it inevitably runs out of energy well before any of its hotshots runs out of bullets.
Sam Raimi does a lot of interesting things in The Quick and the Dead and Sharon Stone plays a convincing female gunfighter, but the one-horse plot with no subplots to generate additional interest becomes a drag.
