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Wyatt Earp featured Kevin Costner, Dennis Quaid, and Gene Hackman. It was the turbulent story of the lawman Wyatt Earp and his brothers in their quest for fortune on the frontier. However, the lack of law caused brother Virgil to join the law, then the other brothers just could not leave him hanging. The movie depicted the frontier in the romantic sense because of the colorful cowboys. They traveled from one cattle town to the next and they did so by covered wagon. At each town they ended up having a shootout with bad guy and then force them to leave town. The movie got really violent when the cowboys killed Virgil. Wyatt went on the proverbial warpath of revenge and wiped the cowboys gang clear out. There was some historical value in the fight because Wyatt never actually got shot, though the movie made him out to be immortal.
The movie reinforces the romanticized stereotypes of the frontier, such as, wagon trains, bandits, saloons, hot bar maidens, gun fights (the highlight was the O K Coral), lots of leather apparel, and more six shooters than you can shake a stick at. It also had a shoot out at a train station, showing the change the frontier was undergoing throughout the movie. I compared the first half of the movie to our lectures because once they moved to Tombstone, they left the geographic limits of the plains. My favorite part was the final gun fight where Wyatt gets ambushed but he shoots some cowboys while in the saddle, dismounts, reaches over the horse, grabs his rifle, and then walks right up to the bad guy and shoots him dead. The whole time he was being shot at with bullets tearing through his cloths but never hitting him.