"The director is Sam Raimi (the "Evil Dead" movies,
"Darkman") and he displays once again his zest for stylistic
invention. Early in the movie, a character gets shot through the
hat brim, and the sun shines through the hole into the camera lens.
A nice touch, but Raimi tops it later in the film by showing the
sun shining through a bullet hole clean through a guy's body, and
by a third shot in which we look down Main Street through a large
hole in a man's head.
"The cinematographer, Dante Spinotti ("The Last of the
Mohicans") makes the material look terrific. The lowering skies
around the isolated town make it look ripe for vengeance of biblical
proportions, and there are quiet satirical touches, as when a man
stands in a saloon door and his shadow seems about 6 miles long.
It also helps the visuals that it rains all the time in this town
(although when it doesn't, nothing is green). – Roger Ebert
(2-10-95).
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"This
witty homage to the Spaghetti Western is delivered with all the
schlock panache and visual gags you'd expect from director Sam Raimi
("The Evil Dead" and "Evil Dead II"). While
the film uses all the usual Sergio Leone flourishes - long silences,
long stares, and outbursts of rabid violence - they're all delivered
with such referential joy and blatant mischief as to lift the film
head and shoulders above its more derivative peers.
With humour, solid acting, and Raimi's undoubted cinematic flair,
"The Quick and the Dead" does more to rescue the Western
from both pomposity and prejudice than any other film since "Blazing
Saddles".
The whole film has tremendous visual style, and the frequent bursts
of violence are delivered with a clever and often hilarious use
of special effects." -- Matt Ford, bbc.co.uk. (11-27-00)
----------------------
"As a piece of construction, The Quick and the Dead holds
up. It's never quite boring, thanks to the skillful direction of
Sam Raimi (Evil Dead). He may not be one of those directors who
can place a camera in exactly the right spot so the shot resonates
with emotion and psychological rightness. But in terms of kinesis,
in terms of the bam-bam-bam you want from a Western, Raimi is in
complete control.
"The Quick and the Dead is energetically made. Essentially
just a series of one-on-one gunfights -- it takes place over a four-day
gunfighters' contest in the saddest, dingiest Western town you ever
saw -- Raimi finds ways to make these gunfights different, to infuse
them with genuine tension.
"Raimi expertly handles the pacing and the even more elusive
matter of tone. With its Mexican guitar on the sound track, its
mysterious stranger and its cast of freakish bit characters, The
Quick and the Dead' is clearly a parody of Sergio Leone's spaghetti
Westerns. Yet the film never slides so far into silliness that the
gunfights aren't tense or the significant deaths don't register."
– Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle. (2-10-95).
