Tombstone

Twenty-five years old, it was late to be a great American Western. But it was.

For veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, it was their “go-to” movie, that one cassette or disc every outpost played repeatedly. Troops adopted the lingo, calling each other things like “lunger” and “law dog.” Alpha-male admirers include police officers; one pulled up his shirt to display Ringo’s likeness sewn onto his Kevlar vest. The movie has no lack of female devotees, and younger fans often tell [Johnny Ringo's actor] that they have bonded with parents and grandparents while enjoying the movie together; Tombstone now boasts three generations of fans. It’s very much one of those compulsively watchable movies that whenever you come across it on television, you wind up watching again until the end credits roll. How odd it is, then, that a movie that now seems so perfectly realized was once a patient whose heart had stopped beating and required the movie equivalent of a defibrillator to start pumping again.

It's a movie with a lot to recommend it. REBELLER has a two-part series on the hardships of shooting it; one and two.