"Young Guns" -- What a Dud!
by David Loftus
[This review first appeared in the Roseburg (Oregon) News-Review, August 26, 1988.]
Ain't these boys grand? They ride, they shoot, they talk history and philosophy, they even do drugs!
There are a lot of bad movies out right now, but "Young Guns" is rotten.
It's a pity, because production rounded up a fine group of youthful actors, and the cast makes a valiant attempt to get this turkey to fly. Mostly it just flaps around the fenced yard in which the writers put it, however.
You can see it all in the opening credits. Nice solarized footage of the young killers walking onto the horizon. The camera peers closely at each interesting face as the actor's name appears beside him: Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Charlie Sheen, and the lesser known Dermot Mulroney and Casey Siemaszko. The soundtrack rumbles acceptably with a chugging synthesizer over a distant screaming guitar.
Then they spoil it by having the boys draw and fire a senseless fusillade at nothing. Yeah, that's the ticket: like, subtle.
It must have seemed like a good idea. A bunch of aimless boys in Lincoln County, N.M., circa 1878, are organized by an English rancher (Terence Stamp) who hires them to patrol his property -- they're known as "The Regulators" -- and teaches them some reading and manners. Then a gang of thugs owned by the local robber baron (Jack Palance) bushwhacks their benefactor, and the boys, temporarily deputized by the local judge, go out to arrest the gang but get out of hand with the shooting.
Hell, it's even a true story, apparently. The wildest, most trigger-happy of the boys will go on to infamy as Billy the Kid.
The problem, after all the research into history and sets and costumes, is the film still lacks any feeling of authority or authenticity.
A lot of it has to do with lousy writing, which throws in anachronistic verbal slang and trendy references to yellow journalism, the Slaughter of the Red Man, disposing of opponents "the Irish way," Edgar Allan Poe.
When Billy the Kid (Estevez) arrives at the Englishman's ranch, one of the other boys says: in order to join us, "You can't be a geek off the street." (I believe the word "geek" originated at the turn of the 20th century to refer specifically to a carnival freak who bit the heads off small live animals.)
And I could swear I heard Estevez yell, "Regulators, let's rock out now!"
As for topicality, we get to hear excerpts from the newspapers of the day, trumpeting William Bonney's good looks (personally, I find photos of the kid distinctly plain, if not ugly) and derring-do, so Sheen can mutter: "Papers can't get anything right."
Maybe so. But movies are even greater liars. How do outlaws on the run in the high desert get their hands on a newspaper? How many towns out West had newspapers in those days? And how does Doc (Sutherland) get mail delivered to his comrades hiding out in the mountains when he steals back to town for his Oriental sweetheart?
Estevez does pretty well capturing the crazy menace of a kid who has nothing to lose and gets a thrill out of killing. Little brother Sheen doesn't get to do much beyond look steadfast and die.
Phillips is all right as Chavez y Chavez, a half-Mexican half-Navaho, although he looks pretty stupid leading the others on a peyote trip (would a true native American bring some palefaces in on a sacred ceremony?), and then lecturing them on the government's breaking a beef contract and massacring his tribe.
Sutherland has the toughest job: Quoting poetry and trying to convince an Oriental concubine belonging to Palance that her past can be flung away like a yellow paperback book.
When the U.S. Cavalry is called in to back up Palance's gang, various bounty hunters, and concerned citizens that have the boys surrounded, Sutherland gets to say, "Billy, we're good but this is getting ridiculous." What's ridiculous is that a halfway intelligent fellow like his character would stick with an unpredictable psycho like the Kid.
Sutherland has presence, and it's amazing that he manages to look as sincere and composed as he does with such drivel. I look forward to seeing him cast in something worthwhile.
Siemaszko and Mulroney are quite good as the vulnerable and skittish Charles Bowdre and the disgusting Dirty Steve.
Stamp and Palance just came in to look dumb, get shot, and collect their paychecks.
Thank heaven, after the voice-over explains precisely what happened to everyone in this "true story," the makers of the film flash that obligatory warning: "The characters portrayed in this film are fictional; any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental."
No kidding?