One of the finest actors of a generation, Leonardo DiCaprio has starred in four movie Westerns in his decorated acting career. While most associate such Westerns with Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, and Alejandro G. Inarritu’s The Revenant, the latter for which DiCaprio won an Academy Award, Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead deserves serious consideration for the best in class.

Released in 1995, The Quick and the Dead is a progressive, non-traditional Western that revolves around a quick-draw shooting competition in 1881 Arizona. The film boasts a stellar cast led by Sharon Stone and a charismatic performance by DiCaprio and also has a much lighter tone and more amusing tenor than the westerns above. Now that The Quick and the Dead is available on Netflix, fans should revisit DiCaprio’s most entertaining Western movie and see how far he’s come as an A-list Hollywood actor.

What Is The Quick and the Dead About?
Sony Pictures

Written by Simon Moore and directed by Sam Raimi, The Quick and the Dead is a revisionist Western set in Redemption, Arizona in 1881. The story concerns Ellen, aka The Lady (Sharon Stone in a towering performance), a hardened gunslinger who arrives in Redemption, a town controlled by the powerful criminal-turned-mayor, John Herod (Gene Hackman). Herod has arranged a quick-draw shooting competition that involves single-elimination rules. For participants, the rules include gun fighting once a day, never refusing a challenge, and fighting to the death or submission. Despite pushback from the men in town, Herod allows Ellen to enter the competition, which she ultimately dominates.

DiCaprio plays Herod’s son, Fee, aka The Kid. The Kid is also a skilled quick-draw shooter and enters the tournament with Ellen. The Kid and Ellen also compete with Cort (Russell Crowe), a gunslinger who has disavowed violence to become a preacher. The dramatic conflict escalates when a flashback reveals that Herod and his men lynched Ellen’s father (Gary Sinise), priming Ellen’s return for revenge. Ellen’s father was the former Marshall of Redemption and when Herod strung him up, he gave Ellen a gun and three shots to hit the rope and free him. Ellen missed the rope and accidentally killed her father, adding tragic, heartfelt pathos to the character and a legitimate drive for vengeance.

As Ellen, Cort, and The Kid advance through the shooting tournament, the stakes are raised by Herod, who declares all duels must be completed to death. Doc (Roberts Blossom), one of Herod’s rivals, gives Ellen her father’s old Marshal badge and encourages her to help get rid of Herod and his men for good. The danger Ellen faces transcends the shooting tournament when Herod challenges The Kid and forces Ellen to face Cort, with the violence spilling into an unpredictably rousing and feel-good ending in the underrated ’90s western.

DiCaprio’s Performance as The Kid
Sony Pictures

Before detailing the Western movie’s overall superiority, DiCaprio’s superb performance as The Kid deserves closer attention. After giving many different performances in This Boy’s Life, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, and The Basketball Diaries, DiCaprio’s natural onscreen charisma and charming magnetism prove his A-list bona fides in The Quick and the Dead. The ability to not just hold his own, but often outshine such Oscar-caliber costars as Hackman, Crowe, and Stone so early in his career is truly special. Stone recently recalled celebrating DiCaprio’s 18th birthday while making the movie and revealed that she personally paid DiCaprio’s salary after the studio refused to hire him (via Variety).

The Kid’s likable charms turn into a deeply vexed moral dilemma when he is challenged to a dual by Herod. DiCaprio brilliantly shifts from an upbeat, outgoing youngster to a conflicted young man who learns that Herod is not his father as he has believed his whole life. Torn between his long-held loyalties to Herod and Ellen’s newfound friendship and desire to rid the town of evil, DiCaprio plays The Kid with a precocious emotional resonance that is apparent onscreen, and obvious why he was cast in Romeo + Juliet and Titanic in the next two years.

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Moreover, compared to the Western movie characters he’s played since, The Kid is much more enjoyable. In Django Unchained, DiCaprio played the vile and revolting slave owner Calvin Candie, whose disturbing language and over-the-top histrionics are deeply deplorable. In The Revenant and Killers of the Flower Moon, DiCaprio gives stellar performances as much more dislikable characters who, despite their three-dimensional complexity, are nowhere near as rootable or relatable as The Kid. More natural and less performative, DiCaprio plays The Kid with undeniably convincing results, especially when unspeakable tragedy strikes in the final act.

Why The Quick and the Dead is DiCaprio’s Best Western
Sony Pictures

Beyond DiCaprio’s electric performance and Raimi’s stylish direction, The Quick and the Dead stands out for its outstanding supporting cast and thematic message of inclusion. Most movie Westerns are male-dominated and follow a tried-and-true formula whose tropes and tenets moviegoers can see coming a mile away. By design, The Quick and the Dead flips the conventions of the genre on their ear, advocates for female empowerment, and soars thanks to Sharon Stone’s scintillating performance as a woman haunted by her past and driven to atone for the responsibility she feels for her father’s death.

Apart from being well ahead of its time, advocating for equality and inclusion during a time in the 19th century when such progressiveness was not the norm, The Quick and the Dead soars above its competitors thanks to its supporting cast. Russell Crowe gives an emotionally fraught turn as Cort in one of his early pre-famous roles, flashing his movie star quality before landing his breakout role in L.A. Confidential. While Stone did not pay Crowe’s salary, she urged the studio to halt production for two weeks for Crowe to travel to the U.S. from Australia to star in the movie (via Us Magazine).

The movie also boasts the impressive supporting likes of Lance Henriksen, Tobin Bell, Keith David, Marc Boone Junior, Pat Hingle, Woody Strode, and Bruce Campbell, all of whom add diverse appeal to the movie that adds to the immense entertainment value. However, it’s the skin-crawling terror performed by the great Gene Hackman as villain John Herod that elevates the movie to new heights.

If a story is only as good as its villain, Hackman’s vicious turn as Herod easily eclipses the Western movie baddies DiCaprio has faced. DiCaprio was the laughable villain in Django Unchained, faced a marauding bear in The Revenant, and was complicit in his uncle William Hale’s (Robert De Niro) genocidal crimes in Killers of the Flower Moon. Although the true nature of the latter is unforgivable, De Niro plays Hale with a much more genteel veil of evil than Hackman’s frightening barbarism as Herod. As such, Ellen and The Kid’s triumphant revenge is all the more satisfying when The Quick and the Dead shoots for its final target. Stream on Netflix.