Now I saw this in the cinema in 1995 and had somehow managed to completely forget all about it - until I saw it again just last week and realised why. It's not that it is awful, it's just that it is so very derivative and very, very dependant on Gene Hackman ("Herod") who walks a fine line between menace and ham in a none too convincing fashion. He is running a to-the-death gun slinging competition - almost like one of the chivalric jousts of old - with the winner having to face him in the final shoot-out for an huge poke. Sharon Stone ("Ellen") arrives in his dingy town just at the start of the process determined to avenge her father's killer; Russell Crowe is "Cort", a preacher who also has a pretty violent past and "the Kid" (Leonardo di Caprio) who has the clear belief that his youth and skill make him all but immortal are all coaxed, cajoled and threatened into participating in this game of death. Sam Raimi has all the ingredients of a great little western adventure, but the cast don't work well together at all. Stone is well past her potent best and the usual guy-with-a-grudge theme is now so hackneyed as to render this little better than a series of gunfights with characters about whom I could not care less. The cinematography and some of the photographic styles are interesting, though - the film has a classy look to it and Alan Silvestri creates some tension with his slightly untypical (for a western) score; but the whole is nowhere near the sum of the parts leaving us with something that now, more than ever, just looks like it's been made for telly.