Sam Raimi takes on the Western genre. That’s all I needed to know in 1995 to get me to buy a ticket for “The Quick and the Dead”. I’ve been a fan of Raimi since he tilted the horror genre on its head with his enduring classic “Evil Dead”. And Westerns have been a part of my cinematic life since I was too young to appreciate them. But I watched them anyway because my father and grandfather always had them on the television. Over time I would grow to admire them myself.

“The Quick and the Dead” features a superb cast beginning with its lead Sharon Stone. Fresh off the enormous success of “Basic Instinct”, Stone was brought on to star and co-produce. She ended up playing a big part in how the film turned out. She threatened to quit if the studio didn’t hire Sam Raimi to direct. She pushed hard for her co-star Russell Crowe, in a role that would put the Australian actor on the Hollywood map. And she even paid a young Leonardo DiCaprio’s salary after the studio hesitated to hire him.

The icing on the cake was casting the effortlessly brilliant Gene Hackman as the film’s vile and utterly chilling villain. Hackman offers a masterclass in calm calculated menace, delivering a character who is as magnetic as he is ruthless. Surrounding the two former and two future A-listers was a terrific supporting cast that included Keith David, Tobin Bell, Lance Henriksen, Gary Sinise, Pat Hingle, Mark Boone, and more.

Raimi and screenwriter Simon Moore make their ambitions clear. “The Quick and the Dead” is an unashamed homage to the great spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci. Their influence drips from every portion of the movie, from its story to its characters to its gritty violence to the very way it’s shot. But Raimi and Moore add their own spin by offering an interesting gender twist to the usual revenge-driven gunfighter story.

The story kicks off with a mysterious woman named Ellen (Stone) riding into the ironically named town of Redemption. We learn all we need to know about Redemption in the first few minutes. It’s a lawless town where miscreants are allowed to run wild and its busiest man is the coffin maker. And it’s all ran by the tyrannical self-appointed mayor John Herod (Hackman), who plucks half of every dollar made by the good folks who remain. And who punishes anyone who dares to question his iron fist rule.

Ellen keeps her reasons for coming to Redemption to herself. But over the course of the film, a series of flashbacks make it abundantly clear – it’s good old-fashioned revenge. And while no one recognizes her, she has a painful history with the town that she has come to reckon with. And it just so happens she arrives as Herod announces a single elimination quick-draw tournament. Ellen quickly signs up, claiming she’s only interested in the prize money.

An assortment of other gunslingers, wannabes, and unsavory types sign up as well. Among them is a young hothead calling himself “The Kid” (DiCaprio), a bragging blowhard named Ace (Henriksen), the cryptic Sgt. Clay Cantrell (David), and of course John Herod himself, who isn’t afraid to bend to rules and change them for his benefit. The wildcard is a man named Cort (Crowe), a former member of Herod’s gang who renounced violence and became a preacher. Seeing it as an act of betrayal, Herod has his henchmen shackle Cort and forces him into the tourney.

As Moore’s script thrives in its straightforward simplicity, Raimi’s dynamic visual style injects the story with so much energy and life. The film features some of the director’s most audacious swings to date. He and cinematographer Dante Spinotti empty their visual bag of tricks – extreme closeups, whip pans, dutch angles, split diopter shots, rapid zooms. Add in the grainy textures and sepia hue and you have the kind of kinetic filmmaking that hearkens back to classic movies while making its own creative statement.

“The Quick and the Dead” surprisingly bombed at the box office. But over time opinions have changed as it has been given the reassessment it deserves. It’s both an artfully nostalgic and a slyly subversive feature that was clearly ahead of its time. It’s true that the story could use more depth. But the aggressively daring style is exhilarating and the cast is top-to-bottom entertaining. Simply watching Hackman is pure joy and you can see the future Best Actor chops in Crowe. We even get the final film role from the great character actor Roberts Blossom. What’s not to love?

VERDICT – 4 STARS