‘The Quick and the Dead’ (R)

"The Quick and the Dead" tries to use ear-shattering gunplay and a battery of comic-book-style touches to disguise the obvious fact that it's a western vanity project for Sharon Stone.

But although Stone may be pleasing to some eyes, she's pretty small in the saddle here -- just an innocuous gender twist on the reluctant cowboy hero. And her story of hellbent revenge is about as compelling as a 30-second fragrance commercial.

One day, Stone rides into a town called Redemption (a good name for a western-style perfume), a six-gun in her holster, a smoldering cigarette in her mouth and her hair fashionably disheveled. She does what any narrow-eyed, post-Clint-Eastwood character would: She tries to stay out of trouble by hanging out in a bar frequented by killers, outlaws and cutthroats.

Stone is just in time for a quick-draw shooting contest sponsored by nasty mayor Gene Hackman. Stone watches as a collection of over-familiar archetypes sign up, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Hackman's tough-talking, swaggery son; Keith David, a pipe-smoking shootist; Lance Henriksen, who can fire holes through playing cards from a distance; and outlaw-turned-preacher Russell Crowe, whose pretty Australian face will engender better scripts than this in the future.

Stone, who saves Crowe from an early exit with a dazzling display of gunplay, is practically obliged to join the competition. The rest of the movie is a series of one-on-one shootouts, the contestants narrowing down until there is a final winner. If you're wondering how well Stone will do (even after the credits inform you she's a co-producer), perhaps you ought to catch this movie.

Stone seems to conceive of acting as a series of fixed facial expressions. She goes from one to another -- two in all -- like someone playing with Peking opera masks. Her first face is the tight-lipped, don't-mess-with-me glare, which she brings into town. Her second consists of wide-eyed, forlorn anxiety, which occurs every time she sets eyes on Hackman. The cause of this exclamation-point fear -- to preserve what few secrets Simon Moore's script operates on -- is for you to discover. Suffice it to say, there hasn't been acting this mechanical since "Speed Racer."

If Stone is forgettable, Hackman at least provides entertaining glimmers of villainy, a quality he has perfected in recent roles. "I could give you more money than you could spend," he tells Stone, by way of a marriage proposal.

"I'd never feel like I'd earned it," she says.

"Oh yes you would," he says with that Hackman chuckle.

"The Quick and the Dead" is made bearable by director Sam Raimi, who bombards us with frenetic editing, crazy-angle shots and enjoyably cartoonish cliches: A glint of reflected light from a dark window, as Hackman peeps at Stone through a telescope; the mechanical grinding of the clock hand as it closes in on the hour -- the cue for each gun battle; and hilariously exaggerated gunshot exit wounds. But all the stylistic sleight of hand in the world can't hide the central problem: The star of the show is more Dead than Quick.

THE QUICK AND THE DEAD (R) -- Contains gunshot violence, minor profanity and almost-peekaboo shots of Stone in a nightshirt.