By JT REID For the Keizertimes
Perhaps no other time in American history has been quite as romanticized as the Wild West era, and that is not surprising. Cowboys are cool; just ask my 200+ hours logged in Red Dead Redemption 2.
Anybody who knows anything about the gunslingers of this bygone time of lawlessness and freedom knows the names Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, but they might not know the story that made them famous.
Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War is that story, and although the documentary itself has some issues it is nonetheless carried by its interesting subject matter and solid performances that make it respectable entertainment.
Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War is a six-episode docudrama narrated by Ed Harris, and boy does it ever lean heavily on the “drama” part. The reenactments and interpretations of actual historical events are plentiful, often eclipsing the “docu” half made up of your usual historian talking heads and voiceovers, and most of the time these moments are quite effective at making the history easily digestible for everyone, although I do wish that it used more authentic visuals such as actual photographs of Tombstone and its famous residents.
At other times these reenactments can be hilariously histrionic, turning what may otherwise be a legitimate retelling into a hodgepodge of Western film clichés where everyone walks side by side in slow motion while coolly smoking cigarettes and the delineation between good and evil is clear as day.
Wyatt Earp may be a mostly faithful reconstruction, but there is no doubt that it is also a slightly sanitized and highly streamlined version. The Wyatt Earp here is a hero who has never done anything wrong rather than the actual human being that he was, and instead of being a dangerously unhinged and volatile drunk, Doc Holliday simply comes across as a rascal. The streamlining is necessary in its way, as there is only so much time to delve into minutia and nuance, but it bumps up against another issue: Sometimes it feels like the show is dumbing things down for its audience, a fact that is especially apparent with its overuse of onscreen text and insistence on repeating things more than once.
Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War is entertaining despite these flaws. The aforementioned melodrama is more of a product of the writing and direction than it is of the acting, which is good but won’t win any awards. And although the reenactments are everywhere they never overstay their welcome as the story keeps chugging along, a fact that speaks to Wyatt Earp’s good pacing and editing. Overall, Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War is an enjoyable documentary to watch simply because the story at its core is so interesting with its multiple shootouts, legal dramas, and connectivity to the larger story of the American frontier. It provides entertainment and it provides a solid, if basic, understanding of what went down at the OK Corral and beyond, which is enough, I reckon. Yee-haw and all that.
All six episodes of Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War are now available on Netflix.