听 User Rating 
This witty homage to the Spaghetti Western is delivered with all the schlock panache and visual gags you'd expect from director Sam Raimi ("The Evil Dead" and "Evil Dead II").
The film focuses on a lethal tournament to find the fastest gun in the west, orchestrated by Herod (Hackman) the wicked boss of a frontier township. This tournament proves to be a magnet for all kinds of motley renegades who blow into town and kick up no end of mayhem in the process. While the film uses all the usual Sergio Leone flourishes - long silences, long stares, and outbursts of rabid violence - they're all delivered with such referential joy and blatant mischief as to lift the film head and shoulders above its more derivative peers.
With humour, solid acting, and Raimi's undoubted cinematic flair, "The Quick and the Dead" does more to rescue the Western from both pomposity and prejudice than any other film since "Blazing Saddles". Ellen (Sharon Stone) is a strong lead as an Eastwood-esque interloper with no name and a score to settle, while Hackman's creepy headman is full of malicious delight at his own devilish cunning. The whole film has tremendous visual style, and the frequent bursts of violence are delivered with a clever and often hilarious use of special effects.
Between them Raimi, Hackman, and Stone (who co-produced) proved that if you can't beat them, at least you can laugh at them, and managed to give the genre a whole new lease of life in the process.
