With The Quick and the Dead, Sam Raimi Brought His Gonzo Approach to the Western

It begins with a lone rider crossing the open prairie, and ends with that same lone rider fading off into the horizon after leaving behind a dusty frontier town. Sam Raimi’s 1995 western The Quick and the Dead embraces the genre’s traditionalism while also applying Raimi’s gonzo filmmaking approach. The result is in one of the best and most distinctive westerns of the past 30 years.

Sharon Stone stars as the requisite mysterious itinerant gunfighter, known for most of the movie simply as the Lady, and the supporting cast is absurdly stacked, including Gene Hackman riffing on his Oscar-winning Unforgiven role as the villain, plus Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio at their early-career hunkiest. They join the likes of Lance Henriksen, Mark Boone Junior, Keith David and Tobin Bell as participants in a deadly quick-draw contest, all with their own hidden agendas.

The Quick and the Dead is an outlier both among modern westerns and within Raimi’s filmography, and it’s not surprising that it took quite a while to find a receptive audience. With a new 4K SteelBook release celebrating the movie’s 30th anniversary, it’s getting the lavish treatment it deserves as a landmark film from a major auteur.

How Was The Quick and the Dead Received Upon Release?

Although it was a high-priority release for Sony’s TriStar Pictures, thanks largely to Stone’s superstar status following the success of Basic Instinct, The Quick and the Dead was a box-office disappointment that failed to impress critics. It was long considered a relative low point in Raimi’s career, sandwiched between the Evil Dead trilogy capper Army of Darkness and the Oscar-nominated thriller A Simple Plan. While it offers a glimpse into DiCaprio and Crowe’s future mega-stardom, it’s also part of a string of post-Basic Instinct misfires for Stone that eventually led to her career downturn.

Critics were mostly dismissive, especially compared to their more enthusiastic responses to Raimi’s previous films. Siskel and Ebert gave The Quick and the Dead two thumbs down, with Gene Siskel saying that he was “thoroughly bored.” Ebert was slightly kinder, giving the movie two stars out of four and conceding that it “is not without its good points.”

Even Raimi has expressed his dissatisfaction with The Quick and the Dead, telling Empire in a 2009 interview, “I reached a dead-end after that movie. I felt my style didn’t help make it into a great picture.”

Why Is The Quick and the Dead Important to See Now?

With all due respect to Siskel, Ebert, and Raimi himself, they’re wrong about The Quick and the Dead, and the movie has earned its improved reputation over the past few decades. Raimi’s style is a perfect fit for the archetypal western story from screenwriter Simon Moore, blending cartoonish playfulness with a reverence for classic cinematic techniques.

In one moment, Raimi emulates spaghetti western legend Sergio Leone with extreme close-ups on characters’ squinted eyes and furrowed brows, and in another moment, he positions the camera behind a perfectly sized bullet hole in a gunfighter’s head, like something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon. He uses snap zooms, split diopters, Dutch angles, and other stylistic flourishes to both dramatic and comedic effect, offering unexpected perspectives on familiar showdowns and confrontations.

Stone steps into the prototypical role of the taciturn wanderer seeking revenge, playing down her sultry femme fatale persona but still making the most of Moore’s hard-boiled dialogue. Hackman makes his sadistic villain John Herod into a larger-than-life adversary worthy of the hatred of every single person in the small town of Redemption. Henriksen and David stand out among the many flamboyant gunslingers who enter the quick-draw contest, bringing personality and flair to their limited screen time.

The town itself is just as archetypal as the plot and characters, with a main street that seems designed solely for hosting gunfights. There’s no sheriff or marshal or legal authority of any kind, with Herod bringing what he calls “not law — order” via regressive taxes and the very real threat of dying if anyone disobeys him. Every time a contestant falls in the quick-draw competition, town residents eagerly loot the body for every item of value, right down to the gold teeth.

It’s a heartless, lawless world painted in the broadest strokes of the genre, but it never feels rote or uninspired. Raimi creates a vibrant, heightened environment somewhere between reality and fantasy, and it’s a joy to watch.

What New Features Does The Quick and the Dead 4K Blu-ray Have?

While it looks and sounds gorgeous, with a 4K restoration from the original camera negative, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, Sony’s new 4K SteelBook release unfortunately skimps on the bonus features. There are seven short deleted scenes, along with the theatrical trailer, but no commentary tracks either from film scholars or anyone who worked on the movie, and no new or vintage featurettes.

Maybe The Quick and the Dead still doesn’t have the reputation needed for the full-scale physical-media package, or maybe Sony needs to license it to a boutique label to give it the appropriate care. Still, this handsome anniversary release is an important step toward giving a brilliant Western its proper due.

The Quick and the Dead is available for purchase on 4K Blu-ray now.