Tom Mix and Wyatt Earp team up to solve a murder at the Academy Awards in 1929 Hollywood.
James Garner Bruce Willis Malcolm McDowell Mariel Hemingway Kathleen Quinlan Jennifer Edwards Patricia Hodge Richard Bradford M. Emmet Walsh Joe Dallesandro Andreas Katsulas Dann Florek Bill Marcus Michael C. Gwynne Dermot Mulroney Miranda Garrison Liz Torres Castulo Guerra Dakin Matthews Vernon Wells Dennis Rucker John Dennis Johnston Kenny Call Jack Garner Jerry Tullos Herb Tanney Peter Jason Richard Fancy Glenn Shadix Show All…
ML Delphi Premier Productions Cecchi Gori Group Tiger Cinematografica Hudson Hawk Films Ltd. TriStar Pictures
Catalina, Sunset - Dämmerung in Hollywood, Intrigo a Hollywood, Meurtre à Hollywood, Asesinato en Beverly Hills, Naplemente, Закат, Assassinato em Hollywood, Залез, Meutre à Hollywood, Κρυφά ταλέντα, Zachód słońca, Hollywood 1929, Zalazak Sunca, Захід сонця, キャデラック・カウボーイ, 헐리우드 차차차, 落日
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Germany
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Netherlands
USA
Sunset is mystery crime caper directed by Blake Edwards and staring Bruce Willis and James Garner. James Garner plays old man Wyatt Earp who teams up with western movie star Tom Mix ( Bruce Willis) to solve a murder in 1929 Hollywood.
Garner and Willis are both playing real people. The story never happened but Wyatt Earp did work in Hollywood during the last years of his life.
This movie doesn't know if it's a comedy or a drama. James Garner is the stand out in this forgettable film.
"It's all true, give or take a lie or two."
In 1929, the top movie star of the time Tom Mix (Bruce Willis), signs up to play famous lawman Wyatt Earp. Studio head Alfie Alperin (Malcolm McDowell) sees a potential epic and brings the aging Earp (James Garner) in as a technical consultant. Mix and Earp hit it off straight away but before long they find themselves at the heart of a murder mystery and corruption.
Before Die Hard, Bruce Willis tried to make the difficult transition from TV star to movie star in two Blake Edwards films, Blind Date and this mystery western. On paper this was a great idea, taking two iconic characters and putting them into the…
Blake Edwards directing Bruce Willis and James Garner as Tom Mix and Wyatt Earp solving a lurid old Hollywood murder mystery would be one for Why Isn't This Better? file if it weren't obvious why it isn't better: Willis, who's treated as more or less equal in heroism to Garner's older, more authentic lawman because both men are equally aware of their own phoniness. A decent idea but the end result is that Willis is at his insufferably cocky worst and the movie never takes any opportunity to pierce him. He wears some amazing outfits though.
The most interesting character by a mile is Malcolm McDowell's Alfie Alperin, a "Happy Hobo" silent film clown turned powerful movie mogul who uses…
Bruce Willis is early movie cowboy star Tom Mix. His producer wants him to play Wyatt Earp, so they bring in the real Wyatt Earp, played by James Garner. The producer is a jerk named Alperin and the story revolves around a murder and which of the family Alperin may have been involved. I've read mixed reviews on this, but I really enjoyed it. I thought it was well done, the chemistry between Willis and Garner is great, there are some wonderful lines, and as a mystery it flowed well. I would certainly be happy to watch it again.
“Hey, SUNSET is my favorite Wyatt Earp movie!” said nobody.
A pokey, crotchety little “Wyatt Goes to Hollywood” fantasia that’s nowhere near as smart-n-crackling as it thinks it is but is a fine enough diversion I guess, particularly if you’re 92 years old and don’t really watch the pictures much anymore.
Of note mainly as a historical record of how insufferably smirky and dandy Bruce Willis was onscreen prior to his DIE HARD anointment as the embodiment of 1990s all-American machismo.
Also James Garner (60 years old at the time) is mostly awake as Wyatt and gets a couple make-out sessions with Mariel Hemingway (26 at the time).
There’s little else to say about this one. It’s kinda puny. Malcolm McDowell's the bad guy.
This movie gets an extra 0.5 because Malcolm McDowell does the most ridiculous maneuver at the end of the movie that had me laughing so hard. The movie is super boring and lazy.
An A-list silent-era movie-star cowboy (Bruce Willis) and the real-life Wyatt Earp (James Garner) find themselves playing unwitting noir heroes embroiled in a Chinatownesque conspiracy on the studio backlots centered around the presumed-gay daughter of a murdered brothel madam (Mariel Hemingway) and a megalomaniacal actor-cum-magnate transparently modeled on Charlie Chaplin (Malcolm McDowell). Bruce Willis dances the tango with a Mexican barmaid for a full five minutes and the climactic showdown takes place at the first-annual Academy Awards. I am 85% certain this movie actually exists. It couldn't be more incredible if I'd made it up.
TriStar
2.35:1
Color
35mm
15
“It's all true, give or take a lie or two”
Very much in the same vein as the later Hudson Hawk production title Hudson Hawk, the tone with Sunset is genuinely baffling and quite bizarre. What is meant to be a larger than life dynamic duo with comedic overtones is pasting over cracks of dark thematics and two central performances that don’t match. Willis is arguably the triumph as he’s let loose to do what he wants with charm and charisma but that comes into direct dissonance with the direction Garner proceeds to take in the straight man. Granted while the context is two warring factions of maturity and world view, they never correlate or come together. Equally as underwhelming and shocking is how cinematically flat Blake Edward feature is. Composition looks enormously drowned out with so little colour and texture to be found with incredibly poor world-building.
44
Not one person had fun making this
Blake Edwards had a long and successful career predominantly making comedies, but he would fairly regularly throw in film from another genre. He was prolific, he made basically a film a year from the late-1950 to the early 1990s, and while a lot of them are good, I am not sure I ever really understand what to make of his films.
Sunset is one of the most curious films I have seen in a while. A late 1980s comedy-action film, which is neither a comedy nor an action film, that is a throwback to a noir plot, but with a Hollywood western setting. It is a mix of a lot of things, and while it never really coheres, it is…
Extremely fun double-throw back mix of Western, True Hollywood and Neo-Noir gangster film that plays like 'one last rodeo' for the myths of Wyatt Earp as well as the baton-passing of the major myth machine of early Hollywood, starring perhaps one the last action movie stars in Bruce Willis (coming out the same year as his star-making Die Hard) playing one of the first, Tom Mix. Playful and serious in equal measures as a kind of Chinatown-meets-Day of the Locust-via pick-your-fin-de-sicle-Western (Ride the High Country, Wild Bunch, etc) directed by Blake Edwards who had already skewered Hollywood about as well as anybody with SOB, here with enough nostalgia to bring a smile to your face but not so much that…
Friday night double feature of films from the JGWEEU (James Garner as Wyatt Earp Extended Universe) Part II: Blake Edwards' Sunset.
Can we all just agree that Blake Edwards post 1979 was the worst? Every time I watch one of his films from the 80s all I can think is. "who in the hell is this movie even made for?" Some are more palatable than others, but overall I have always found Edwards' schtick pretty tiresome. Still, when I found out that he had made a film about Tom Mix teaming up with Wyatt Earp (played for a second time by Garner) to solve a murder, I thought this could finally be the one I actually like. Plus, word was…
