Self-consciously grandiose western whose reputation far outweighs its merits. The title alone alludes to its mythic status as does the casting of Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas as Doc Holliday. Of course, we're talking about John Sturges's "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral", an even more fictional than usual account of the most famous gunfight in Western history or mythology; you choose. It's a perfectly entertaining picture but it's not much of a Western; you might even say it's a Western for people who don't like Westerns.
All the tropes are in place but when you add them up what you get is a Western in name only minus the necessary feeling. There's nothing here you would find in the films of Anthony Mann or Budd Boetticher; nothing even that you might get from a Delmer Daves Western and certainly nothing you would find in the films of John Ford. In the acting stakes Douglas shamelessly steals it from Lancaster and there's a nice supporting turn from Jo Van Fleet but when the best thing in a Western is the Frankie Laine sung title song, you know something's wrong.
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