In this unusual drama, Jeff Bridges gives a bravura performance as the legendary gunslinger at the end of his days. The past weighs heavily on his shoulders as he sits in a bar in Deadwood Gulch with his three stalwart friends — Charley Prince (John Hurt), an Englishman; Calamity Jane (Ellen Barkin); and California Joe (James Gammon). He is haunted by all the men he sent to their graves as a Union Army scout, a buffalo hunter, a lawman, and a gunslinger. Now a determined young man named Jack McCall (David Arquette) is in town to avenge his mother (Diane Lane), the only woman Wild Bill ever really loved.
Walter Hill directs this sober tale which is drenched with melancholy. German novelist Heinrich Boll once remarked, "The artist carries death within him like a good priest his breviary." In this unusual and pensive portrait of Wild Bill Hickok, the hero is a burnt-out artist who has lost the lust for life after squaring off with death too many times.