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Post by mikef6 on Aug 21, 2017 1:48:55 GMT
1878. Lincoln County. New Mexico Territory. One of the most famous of the deadly feuds in American history, mainly due to the participation of William H. Bonney (or maybe Henry McCarty), a.k.a. Billy the Kid. This film of the Lincoln County War is, of course, a fiction, but it is based, loosely, on history. The area at the time had very little law and a virtual monopoly on the cattle business and retail merchandising. Lawrence Murphy (played by Jack Palance in the movie) was a leader of the monopoly. The Fort Sumner sheriff supported him. Into the middle of this came an Englishman, John Tunstall (Terrance Stamp), who brought his own cattle herd and opened his own dry goods store. He also hired a group of young gunmen – The Regulators - to protect his interests. When Tunstall was killed by the Murphy faction, Tunstall’s Regulators went on a rampage resulting in killings on both sides that extended over months ending with a days long gun battle in Fort Sumner. These are the basic facts with lots of names, places, and incidents left out – just like the movie leaves them out. Even so, this is an entertaining primer on the conflict if you don’t take the details too seriously. The cast consists of several young up-and-coming 80s male stars as the Regulators. Some detractors have called it the Brat Pack western, but there is no winking at the camera or any “look at me I’m playing dress-up” involved in the acting. Several give sincere and sensitive performances. Brothers Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen play The Kid and Regulator leader Dick Brewer, respectively. I was taken by Kiefer Sutherland as Doc Scurlock, budding poet. Lou Diamond Philips, Casey Siemaszko, and Dermot Mulroney fill out the lead cast. My main knocks on the film would be the modern action movie editing and the super-accurate (and super un-historical) handguns whose report is as loud as a cannon shot. Otherwise, the young actors create some interesting characters to follow. A good modern western.
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Post by wanton87 on Aug 21, 2017 19:08:27 GMT
One of my all time favorites mikef6 both the original and the sequel. In my opinion, Emilio Estevez played the best Billy The Kid ever. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but he seems to have gone mostly reclusive these days. When I first saw Young Guns, I was largely unaware of the historical facts. I later found out that much of the movie was indeed factual (originally I thought that it was entirely Hollywood fiction). Billy shooting Bob Olinger (Though of course the shotgun would not have been loaded with nickels) the incident in which Billy unloaded his adversaries gun before shooting him, even though in real life it did not go down in the same fashion, and John Tunstall, while real, was in fact, only a few years older than Billy, as opposed to the middle aged man that he was in the movie. If you’re interested, below is the link to a blog from a girl that has done some detailed research on Billy The Kid: aboutbillythekid.com/
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