Doc Holliday Will Meet You In Tombstone 

I don't really like Western movies about lawmen, and Kurt Russell's Wyatt Earp is an altruistic cornball. His love story with Josephine is dreadful. "That mare is in season." Gross. Plus it's adultery, but it's okay because Wyatt's common-law partner is addicted to laudanum. Morally dubious, cringe to watch, Tombstone should only exist at the bottom of discount bins everywhere, if it weren't for the performance of Val Kilmer.

With his southern drawl, sickly skin, and sweat-beaded face, Kilmer's Doc Holliday carries this movie. Rarely do you get a side character that not only steals the show but makes the entire show watchable. In a movie full of forgetful moments, Doc doesn't have a bad scene. He's a piano-playing, Latin-speaking, quick-drawing curiosity.

Tombstone, the town, is stuck between two worlds. It's wealthy from the discovery of silver, but it's still a Wild West town where shootouts, fights, and more shootouts happen all the time. Doc is like the personification of this town. He's dressed in fashion and clearly has enough money to enjoy himself, but he's also not going to back down from a fight.

Like I said, my ACAB ass hates a Western about a lawman; I'm more than partial to a Western about an outlaw. Doc exists in an interesting middle ground. He's a bit of both, and neither at the same time. He is a lucky gambler, but he will also rob the place if a fight breaks out. He avoids the law as much as he can, but he's also friends with the Earps, known keepers of the peace.

Tombstone, the movie, doesn't really explain how Doc and Wyatt became friends. A gambler like Doc would almost certainly have a beneficial reason for a friendship. Maybe he felt he was safer in Tombstone if he were cozy with the Earps. Doc doesn't help Wyatt because he respects authority — this is proven when Doc denies the handshake of the Tombstone sheriff — it's because the Earp boys are the only men that Doc considers his friends. Still, that reason doesn't seem like the entire truth. Does Doc show up at the final battle because he's worried that Wyatt will lose or does he selfishly plan to end his unfinished business with Ringo? Like Doc states, his hypocrisy knows no bounds.

Although no longer a practising doctor, his name reveals the past profession. You've probably seen the memes online that laugh at how outrageous doctors were in the 1800s. They'd prescribe cocaine and sea air for all sorts of maladies. Doc Holliday is the embodiment of these hilariously questionable historical characters. Perhaps aware of how credulous his practice was, he now decides to use himself as the test subject. He no longer helps others get better; he ensures that he dies on his own terms in the physical and mental state that he chooses. Without any true love in his life, this is relatively easy to do.

Sick with tuberculosis, which the real Doc Holliday contracted by taking care of his mother who died of the disease, Kilmer's Doc decides to live each day like it's his last. That involves a lot of drinking and gambling, and never saying no to a gunfight. Luckily, he's the best drinker and gambler in the West, and he's got the quickest gun draw of anyone. Always the drunkest at the party, and yet somehow the most clairvoyant, Doc gets under Cowboys' skin because of his poker skills and unfiltered, educated mouth. There's no doubt that he's a man who makes enemies easily. Perhaps this is another reason why he cherishes Wyatt's friendship.

Even a sober, abstinent do-gooder should respect Doc's loyalty to his very small circle of friends. Through this loyalty, Doc becomes the Earp brothers' most trusted partner. When they are preparing for the infamous fight at the OK Corral, it's Doc who gets the shotgun, a sign that he's the coolest head of the bunch. It's through these violent incidents that he becomes a law-like figure in Tombstone, even without ever wearing a real badge. His outlaw reputation is put in jeopardy through his loyalty, and I think that's just fine with Doc. He'd rather ride with Wyatt and his immortals than wait for death.

The most memorable saga for Doc in Tombstone is his trilogy of meetings with Ringo, an antagonist who is part of the Cowboys gang. The first is a heated argument and a display of gun twirling in the saloon. The second sees Doc, mid-shave, in the main street of Tombstone, intervening in a dust up between Wyatt and Ringo. It's here that he first delivers the iconic line, "I'm your huckleberry." The final showdown occurs in the woods, where we finally see just how fast and deadly Doc is.

This trilogy of meetings shows Doc's sincerity in his actions. Although he masks his motion through the guise of alcohol and a carefree attitude, he also makes it clear that he is never kidding. Even when Ringo tries to brush off Doc, saying it's not his fight and that he was only fooling when they had beefed earlier, Doc confirms that he was anything but fooling.

How Doc lives is unsustainable, but there's something romantic about how he does it. When he is so sick he can't get out of bed, he still wills himself up in order to back up his friend Wyatt for his final showdown with the Cowboys. Doc, after all, had unfinished business with Ringo.

Then there's the one liners. While Wyatt sits around talking about why he can't save the town, why they shouldn't retaliate, why they should just let things go, Doc is there to bring some much needed poetry to Tombstone. Without a doubt, my favourite is when one of the Cowboys thinks Doc is too drunk to aim, saying that he's probably seeing double. That's when Doc pulls out a second gun and says, "I have two guns, one for each of ya."

And who could forget his introduction to Tombstone. In the first scene, before he gets to the town, we see Doc as soft spoken and mild mannered unless provoked. He's first seen in Tombstone when an angry ruffian (played by a nearly unrecognizable Billy Bob Thornton) is walking down the road with his gun, planning on shooting Wyatt. Before the ruffian can pull the trigger, Doc uncharacteristically hollers out and appears from the shadow. He's magnetic through this whole scene, delivering the simple line, "Wyatt, I am rolling," with otherworldly perfection.

Doc is the fourth horseman. While the three Earp boys are known for obeying the law, Doc is their wild card. He's the one who seems to be somehow outside of the law. Never caught, never proven, but still as slimy as a Cowboy, but loyal like an Earp. He will ride until it's over, but he also never starts it. He just waits for his opponent to say when.

Watching Doc in Tombstone made me want to get blackout drunk. It made me want to gamble in a rundown saloon until sunrise. It almost made me want to get covid again. I'd even start talking with a southern drawl, if I was any good at impressions. But since all of those things will surely make me hate myself, I'll continue to live vicariously through Doc Holliday, who will always wait for me in Tombstone.