Review of Young Guns (1988) by R.c. K — 20 Sep 2009

Now, it's easy to get me to watch a number of movies. Name the right actor, and I'll be less than concerned with what exactly the movie contains. Many, many actors fall into this group, but one of the easiest is either of the Sutherlands. I've been a fan of Kiefer for longer than I can remember, long enough I can't really nail down exactly what film made him for me. It's a good bet it was a mix of Flatliners, The Lost Boys and eventually Freeway. But, I'll hesitate just a bit unless you drop in other actors to draw me in. These don't have to be up to the level of one who actually snaps my head around to make me pay attention, but they have to be of some kind of interest to me. The rest of the main cast easily fits the bill here: Emilio Estevez and brother Charlie Sheen, and Lou Diamond Phillips especially. I can't say I dearly love any of these three, but Charlie, for some reason, has always stuck in my head, and sometimes I sort of feel bad for Lou Diamond Phillips, who has that inescapable reputation of "b-movie" (or, worse: "television movie") star. Heck, I watched Route 666--and liked it all right.

On a remote ranch in New Mexico, a rather effete Englishman named John Tunstall (Terence Stamp) takes on the rather wild and often orphaned (or at least away from home) gunslinging boys he finds and works them on his ranch. He attempts to both educate and civilize these boys. Unfortunately, his land is coveted by fellow rancher Murphy (Jack Palance), who is far less scrupulous than Tunstall. They conflict regularly, much to the chagrin of Tunstall's boys, the rather stupid "Dirty Steve" Stephens (Dermot Mulrooney), the boastful Charley Bowdre (Casey Siemaszko), the proud Chavez Y Chavez (Phillips), the literate Doc Scurlock (Sutherland), the leaderly Dick Brewer (Sheen), and the newly recruited William H. "Billy the Kid" Bonney (Estevez). Murphy is happy to end the conflict by killing Tunstall, which sets the boys into a rage that leads them to pursue justice through lawyer Alex McSween (Terry O'Quinn, whose role as Peter Watts in Millennium is unfortunately going to be clearly erased by his time as Lost's Locke). They are eventually deputized, which Dick sees as cause to be "Regulators" of the law, and Billy sees as cause to execute all the men responsible for Tunstall's death.

I was rather expectant of this movie, being as it comes from the late 80s, has quite a "Brat pack"-ish cast (even if it lacks more than one person from the "actual" brat pack), a ridiculous synth-based score and a mentality that suggests a rather rapid-fire approach to a historical story. Perhaps I was spoiled by Walter Hill's star-laden and "gimmicky" (in the sense that it is filled with actual brothers, thus also having pre-viewing interest driven by the cast) The Long Riders, which is absolutely fantastic. Perhaps I was spoiled by the many westerns I knew so well, even classic ones, prior to viewing this. Perhaps I simply don't like mainstream 1980's westerns (I liked Silverado "all right," you might say). Regardless, this was a pretty serious disappointment. Allegedly, it is reasonably true-to-events, but it sure feels like an over-slick pile of nonsense historically. The entire story feels contrived and worked out, even as it winds its way through actual events. John Fusco, who wrote the film, doesn't exactly have an amazing list of credits to his name, as I've heard less-than-pleasant things about the Jet Li/Jackie Chan team-up The Forbidden Kingdom (with many of its failings hanging, I hear, on a poor script). I'm not amused to find him working on a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, either, but perhaps that will change before said film is produced. Director Christopher Cain isn't exactly swimming in good will from his directorial past, either. I can't claim to have seen his other movies, either, but none of them jump out and scream to be seen, really.

One of the major problems is the way the actors seem to be swimming through the muck of poor writing and direction. There's enough space for them to build characters into vague lines and actions, but not enough that the characters they come up with necessarily work or fit. Sheen does well enough at delivery, but fails to create much of a character in Dick. He's "a decent guy," but that's about it. Mulrooney is comic relief as the idiotic and vulgar Stephens, Siemaszko has a solid footing (leading to the line that was sampled by Warren G for his song "Regulators," no less) but nothing amazing, and Phillips overreaches himself just a bit as always, seeming just a bit too self-serious, yet working charismatically enough despite that. Kiefer is a little confused in the role of the rather poetic Doc, seeming out of place in the role, and a bit like he's trying too hard to erase his nasty, villainous past in many other movies. Even when he's heroic--and he can be--he works best with an edge, some darkness or some conflict. Doc's a little too goody-two shoes, in a sense. The worst offender, though, is definitely Estevez. Suddenly Billy the Kid is completely crackers, rather unsympathetic and just difficult to get a grasp on. I keep getting the feeling we're supposed to like him and root for him, but all I can think is that he's completely insane, stupid, manipulative and leading them all down a very self-destructive past. He gets in that killer last line (which, of course, I won't repeat) before the film ends, but even the punch of that is sucked away by the fact that his character is unsympathetic and rather unlikeable.

It's not a film I'd jump out and say could be improved by this or that, because it fits very well into its time period, and would be a silly waste without the original cast at that age and time. Just a shame the script and direction were in the hands of two people who functioned but just didn't do much more.