Christopher Cain | 102 mins | TV (HD) | 1.85:1 | USA / English | 18 / R
Way back in March, the ever-excellent Colin at Ride the High Country covered a series of films about Billy the Kid, including this late-’80s effort. To quote from the comments section: “I would have been in that target demographic too when I first saw it… around 20 years old or so… I wonder how it would play now to an audience of a similar age.” Well, as someone who watched it when closer to 20 than 30, I shall step up to the task.
Considering this is ‘the Brat Pack Western’, one might well expect a modernised, sanitised West; something like Wild Wild West or Jonah Hex; something rated PG-13. Instead the film seems to have begun life as a serious attempt at a Billy the Kid biography, right down to bloody violence that earns it an R in the US and even an 18 over here. This intention seems to survive — bar a music-video-styled opening, a couple of lines of dialogue, and the wailing ’80s guitar score — but how successful it was is another matter.
I don’t know about historical accuracy in this case, not knowing much more about Billy the Kid than I’ve gleaned from… well, this film, and Colin’s series. Playing loose with facts can work in a film’s favour — as many a filmmaker has noted in the past, they’re making entertainment not documentary — but it can be galling to one who knows the truth. In the way it presents events, this one feels accurate — things like characters appearing only to die immediately; the kind of thing that doesn’t sit well narratively but might be the truth. If it isn’t accurate, this is all the more dangerous: there’s a difference between changing facts so something works as a film narrative and presenting the wrong thing as the truth. 
Though if someone was planning to use Young Guns to research the real-life facts of these events, more fool them in the first place. Wikipedia says (without citation) that “historian Dr. Paul Hutton has called Young Guns the most historically accurate of all prior Billy the Kid films”. We’ll leave it at that for now.
As a film in itself, then, the narrative is a bit scrappy. Our heroes wander around killing some people, racing about the country sometimes for no discernible reason and with chunks apparently missing. For instance, they head to Mexico just for the challenge of it — we’re told it’s a hard road, laden with bounty hunters out to get them — but the film cuts from their decision to make this journey to their arrival with a rapturous welcome. Eh? I have no idea if this stuff was shot and cut for time, or if someone needed to have a long hard look at the screenplay. Or even a quick glance.
The finale is also implausible. One assumes the characters who survive must have survived in reality and the others must’ve died, but the way it’s played here it doesn’t make a great deal of sense. How did they defeat those overwhelming odds? How did they pull off that escape? It might pass muster with The Hero Is Invulnerable movie logic, but not as a claim to depicting real-life events. 
And that’s without mentioning the overuse of dated slow-motion that descends upon its eventual climax.
As for the Brat Pack themselves, Emilio Estevez’s version of Billy the Kid seems to descend during the film from above-himself hot-head out for revenge to giggling loon. This isn’t really character development, more as if halfway through Estevez realised how much fun it was to laugh and so kept doing it. Charlie Sheen gets the honour of (spoilers!) being killed off halfway through. As one of the most recognisable members of the ‘Brat Pack’, here playing the leader of the gang, it works as an effective surprise.
Kiefer Sutherland has the best part though. He’s given the only subplot that approaches anything meaningful and also almost all the best lines (not that there are many). The remainder go to Jack Palance, who isn’t around enough to create a great villain but makes a commendably good hash of it in his brief time. Equally brief is Terence Stamp’s part. I have to say I’m no fan of Stamp — everywhere I’ve seen him he seems awkwardly flat, often phoning it in — but here he’s not bad. This may be because his role’s quite small and relatively subdued as it is. Patrick Wayne appears as Pat Garrett for a knowing cameo; the kind of small role which any viewer can tell Means Something, but if you don’t know what he means there’s no explanation proffered (until the final scene, anyway, when Sutherland narrates a “what happened next” for the surviving characters).
Young Guns is not a particularly likeable film, managing to miss both its potential target audiences: it’s not serious-minded enough for Western enthusiasts, let down by the Brat Pack cast and (it seems) historical accuracy; but it’s surely not fun or modernised enough to appeal to a younger (or younger-minded) crowd. Though clearly it did well enough as it spawned a sequel two years later. I didn’t hate it, I just didn’t particularly like it.
Young Guns is on Channel 5 tomorrow, Sunday 13th November, at 11:15pm.
Young Guns is on 5USA tonight, Tuesday 30th December 2014, at 9pm. It’s sequel, Young Guns II: Blaze of Glory, follows at 11pm.
After four years and three months doing 100 Films, this became the first new film I’ve seen which has a title beginning with the letter Y — the last unaccounted-for letter. Hurrah!
I don’t recall how exactly I came across these animated Sherlock Holmes adaptations starring the voice of Peter O’Toole as the eponymous detective, or how I came to decide to view all of them, but it’s been almost four years since I reviewed the first… and three years since I reviewed the third. Now, finally, I get to the final episode. Such is the erraticism of using LOVEFiLM. (At least I have an excuse for my dawdling here — my incredibly slow viewing of all the Rathbone/Bruce Holmses is entirely my own tardiness.)
Once, a few years ago, SFX published an anime special (it was their first, I think) with a rundown of the Best Ever Anime Films. You’d expect it to be topped by something regularly cited and, considering the source magazine, science-fiction/fantasy-y — 
It’s not scary in the slightest (well, maybe in the slightest, for some kids, but note the U and G ratings), but in terms of how it balances real-life dramas with the fantasy element. Only in both the real and fantasy worlds it’s a lot nicer, friendlier and cheerier than del Toro’s acclaimed fantasy-horror. To put it more succinctly, they share a similar structure and balance, but a completely different tone.
The English-friendly version has advantages too: I love any subtitles which use semicolons. It’s not inundated with them, but there was at least one. Semicolons are so underused. I love a good semicolon.
You know how sometimes you see a bit of a movie on TV and you end up watching just long enough to get caught up so much you’re in for the long haul, no matter what the quality? No? Maybe it’s just me (usually around 
Like I said, daft and implausible. And that isn’t necessarily a problem, but as you watch Iron Eagle you can’t help but wonder if the filmmakers are trying to convince viewers it could be plausible. And it isn’t. Not in the slightest.
I’ve not seen that either, but I think we all know this is a serious step down. Poor man. His career went on to include 
As I mentioned in my review of the 
now occupy almost the same position the Russians did back then, for instance — but I’ll leave the specifics of such things to reviewers more versed in the last 25 years of Western intervention in the Middle East.
Part II, eh? A continuation of the same story from Part I, theoretically; like 
The screenplay is by James Cameron (yes, that one) and Stallone. Cameron says he wrote the action and Stallone added the politics. I don’t know who wrote the dialogue, but on the whole it’s typically straightforward and/or laughably weak. You can see why these days people get hired to do a “dialogue polish”.
if the film is vilifying those who didn’t care about soldiers who fought in Vietnam (which it is), the characters who abandon Rambo and the other PoWs are an embodiment for this disdain.
Back when he was still directing 
Vermithrax Pejorative is a long time coming, however, wisely kept off screen by director Matthew Robbins. It’s not that the monster shouldn’t be revealed, just that, like 
and giant monster than character development. Similarly, an interesting subplot about the move from The Old Ways of magic and superstition to The New Ways of Christianity feels like a good idea that hasn’t been fully integrated, made up of little more than a couple of passing nods and a negatively-inclined inclusion in the coda.
Pale Rider is, in many ways, a pretty stock Western. The plot is likely to be familiar even to those who haven’t seen a great deal of the genre: remote community, where some controlling business-type is making life hard for a bunch of everyday poor grafters; in rides a mysterious stranger, who sees the injustice of the situation; when peaceful methods don’t work, there’s the climactic shoot-out; and the mysterious stranger finally rides into the sunset/from whence he came/forever on.
but the person he has in mind is dead… and yet, when they come face to face, the marshall repeatedly utters, “it is you”.
the only particularly memorable role is Sydney Penny’s naïve young teenager, Megan. Her shifting emotions and variable actions are perhaps the only parts of the story one can’t necessarily see coming from the off.
Although Disney have recently treated (I use the word loosely) us to a glut of films based on theme park attractions, movies adapted from good old board games seem a lot rarer. This is probably for good reason — even more so than Disney rides, the majority have no kind of useable narrative. Cluedo (aka Clue in the US) is one of the few that does, and consequently is one of the few (only?) board games that has reached the silver screen. So far, anyway.
Other than the board game connection, Clue is best known for its three different endings, all of which were released, with each screening having just one attached. On TV the film shows with all three consecutively, and they perhaps work best this way — there’s a rising scale of ridiculousness, and the varied repetition of a couple of gags underlines rather than steals their amusement value. My personal favourite variant was the first, incidentally.
Ah, Rambo. Rambo Rambo Rambo. The only Rambo film I’ve seen is 
Stallone is perfect for the character: suitably calm and ‘everyman’ at the beginning; muscular and mostly silent as the trained assassin; and even an actor capable of pulling off the final breakdown, when the horrors of war spill over. It’s difficult to imagine most muscle-men action stars pulling off Rambo’s closing speech. Throughout, Rambo’s PTSD is made obvious without being overdone: brief flashbacks suggest all the horror we need to know, topped by his final outburst. Rambo isn’t the beast, the men who made him that way are, along with those he did it for who fail to appreciate what he’s been through.
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