THE QUICK AND THE DEAD has a very traditional western story, other than featuring a woman – Sharon Stone (ABOVE THE LAW) as Ellen – in the role of vengeance-seeking gunslinger. You’ve got your western town desperate to get out from under the yoke of a cruel ruler (Gene Hackman [THE SPLIT, PRIME CUT] as John Herod), and your mysterious drifter in town trying to get up the guts to shoot him for killing her father in front of her. All the shootists with the fastest guns and biggest mouths are coming in for a quick draw tournament, and she enters in hopes of getting a shot at her enemy.
But I think it’s truly distinct among ‘90s westerns, with two major things that make it stand out. One is the incredible cast. It includes great western icons: Woody Strode, Roberts Blossom, Pat Hingle, and of course Hackman in a performance arguably on par with UNFORGIVEN. It has colorful roles for genre favorites: Lance Henriksen, Keith David, Mark Boone Jr., Tobin Bell, Sven-Ole Thorsen. It has Gary Sinise immediately after his star-making, Oscar-nominated performance in FORREST GUMP. And it has two right-before-they-exploded co-stars: pre-L.A. CONFIDENTIAL Russell Crowe as former outlaw turned pacifist preacher Cort, and known-for-WHAT’S-EATING-GILBERT-GRAPE Leonardo DiCaprio as The Kid, the cocky, baby-faced son of Herod entering the contest just to get the attention of his asshole dad. We actually see The Kid mobbed by young women at one of the shooting matches, something that would become more familiar to DiCaprio a year later when ROMEO + JULIET came out. (read the rest of this shit…)
“Then let’s head down into that cellar and carve ourselves a witch.”
Just when the night crew is closing up at the Walnut Lake Market, cashier Jennifer (Elizabeth Cox, 
I don’t know how much faith I’d normally have in a DTV sequel to HOSTEL that Eli Roth didn’t have anything to do with, but this one has a good pedigree: it’s directed by Scott Spiegel. He’s no visionary, but he’s not a nobody either. He was one of the producers of HOSTEL, he was the co-writer of EVIL DEAD 2, he directed that grocery store siege movie INTRUDER, he co-wrote 
THE ROOKIE is a 1990 cop movie starring and directed by Mr. Clint Eastwood, that seems intent on passing the action movie torch to a new generation represented by… wait a minute, did I read this– yes, it says here represented by Charlie Sheen. From YOUNG GUNS. Huh.
Hi, everyone. 
