Popular reviews

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★½

  A biopic that psychologically tortures its subject with his own myth. In between Hill's patented deafening gunshots and terse masculinity, he torments Wild Bill in blown out S-VHS black-and-white flashbacks, like he's re-witnessing his past through the glaucoma clouds that are decimating his aim along with old age. This is what happens when you only know one or two people you didn't kill.

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  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★ 1

  Action! - The Unlikely Rumble: Hill v Hyams

  Walter Hill's Western adventures continue with a new story based on one of the Wild West's numerous icons. However, unlike his other works in the genre, the filmmaker attempts to give it a unique touch.

  Indeed, the picture is heavily influenced by The Third Man's fascination with dutch angles, and sections of the film unexpectedly turn black and white, looking like something out of a film akin to Natural Born Killer, albeit less aggressive in style. Hill classified this picture as a "Psychedelic Western," and while it never quite reaches the level of a film like El Topo, the vision shifts and changing camera positions certainly serve to give it a surreal…

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  Review by shookone ★★★

  Walter Hill always had a knack for truly lost men. Bill is no different. between boatloads of killings and opium trips he's not catchable for anyone, on no levels.

  the b/w digital photography somehow reminded me of Michael Mann and his experiments during that time. Hill of course is more Peckinpah than Mann.

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  Review by comrade_yui 5

  america loves the fantasy of the exceptional individual, a heroic napoleonic conqueror who imposes their will upon a chaotic and meaningless world with their sheer wit and immense violence

  but what if that fantasy was real? what if that exceptional person was a real, living human?

  could they live with themselves, with their violence?

  could anyone else live alongside such a monster?

  could the real world afford such a fantasy?

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  Review by Andy Summers 🤠 ★★ 9

  Wild Bill was one of the few films on Walter Hill's filmography that I hadn't seen. And that was a surprise, especially as I'm a firm fan of Hill and a sucker for Westerns too, but this is underseen here on LB, with less than 3K views, and I think I know why. 1995 wasn't a good year for Westerns, but when you throw $30 million dollars at a project, you want to see exactly where it was spent, and I for one couldn't quite see it.

  Wild Bill Hickok is another of those historical names made famous by tales of his exploits in newspapers back East. Hill's film however is a mish-mash of historical facts, a fair bit of…

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  Review by DallasFrance ★★★ 2

  Everybody’s got their blind spots. When I reviewed The Nest and mentioned that I didn’t know who Carrie Coon was, several people said that I absolutely had to watch her in The Leftovers. When I got around to it, I realized that all the hype was warranted (and that I actually had seen her before, in Gone Girl).

  It’s even crazier that I’ve never seen the series Deadwood before. I’ve mainlined most of the other big HBO series (The Wire, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, etc.), and I generally enjoy westerns, but the timing of Deadwood’s release made it an uber-acclaimed HBO series that slipped under the radar for me (along with Oz).

  Until recently, I didn’t know that the great Walter Hill…

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  Review by Justin LaLiberty ★★★½

  a suitably freewheeling biopic of someone who exists more as a myth than a man, with Walter Hill seamlessly weaving from handsome (and violent) studio western fare shot on 35mm to black and white video sequences that serve as drug hazed flashbacks — it’s perhaps Hill’s most alienating move to date, turning the western genre in the mid 90s (in the same year that we got The Quick and the Dead) into something that feels decidedly of the 70s in approach and execution

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  Review by chavel ★★

  Walter Hill’s cluttered and moribund biopic on the famous gunslinger at the tail end of his life, so many tales at his tail end. Wild Bill is strangely arty for a western, with dutch angles, blotchy black & white, strong key lights on lead Jeff Bridges face in color shots, elegiac John Hurt voice-over narration. But the erratic way with itself never allows Bridges to breathe inner life into the character. He’s all greasy hair, slurs, and downed whiskey shots. Surface behavior.

  Ellen Barkin makes a gumption-and-wisecracking Calamity Jane. Diane Lane as a beloved damsel whose destiny with Bill was cut short, although we are unsure on why Hill’s emphasis was curious on this relationship anyway. David Arquette as a crazy-eyed…

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  Review by Joe ★★★★

  "'Scuse me whilst I pull up my pants!"

  Bridges keeps this from feeling as watered down as it by every other right probably is, a broken down gunfighter going blind and whose opium dreams are all shot on video. Ellen Barkin and David Arquette evidently hooked up during filming, very interesting given the dynamic of their one shared scene!

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  Review by Justin Decloux ★★★½

  Walter Hill obsesses about the end of a 'hero', who is defined by the deaths he trailed in his wake, and whose deeds can be summarized as shooting a bunch of fools in the street.

  I was taken aback early as the film zoomed through a bunch of Wild Bill violent exploits and wondered if Hill's goal was to make an IZO style catalogue of western violence, but it was merely table setting for Hill to get to the film's centre: An elegaic stretch of Bill slumping through Deadwood haunted by his regrets. It's a little too muddied to work as well as it wants to, but Hill's decision to shoot Bill's hazy flashbacks on what appears to be early…

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  Review by Sally Jane Black

  A character study burdened by voiceover (which simply inserts unnecessarily a sympathetic point of view) and a bad pacing, a showdown that long overstays its welcome (when making a biopic about someone who dies in a famous manner, dragging out said death does not create tension or drama). Those even vaguely familiar with Hickok's life might be frustrated with the liberties taken, but the fever dream effect it creates to be following along this distorted, broken narrative of opium dream flashbacks and probably flourishes on a legend's life before it's even over is heightened by those liberties. The tone of the film is painful, intentionally so, complete with the brusque, macho denial of that pain built into it. Wild Bill's…

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  Review by Gregory Kent ★★★½

  1995 Ranked
  Walter Hill Ranked

  A little underrated. Walter Hill does some interesting visual things in Wild Bill, especially with the action, and the world looks fully lived in - dusty, muddy, creaky. The cast is also great. Bridges, Barkin, Hurt, Lane, Carradine, Dern, and Gammon are all fantastic in their work. Arquette... is not - he's completely out of place and time in the film and as a crucial character that really hurts the enjoyment. The other element that really drags Wild Bill down are the flashbacks. I don't mind the idea of digging deeper into the main character, his origins, and the reason for his ultimate downfall, but stylistically they don't work. The black and white extra grainy shots using canted angles are distracting, momentum stopping, and just plain ugly. It's such a shame when the rest of the film is shot so well. Much better than it's reputation, but still lower tier Hill.