YOUNG GUNS
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1996 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
(1988) ** (out of four)
Young guys with guns, that's what you get in YOUNG GUNS , the 1988 western starring "six of today's hottest stars." Today, the magnificent six -- Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, Lou Diamond Phillips, Casey Siemasko (?) and Dermot Mulroney -- are nowhere to be seen, with the exception of Mulroney, who co-starred in last year's thriller COPYCAT. In YOUNG GUNS, they play a bunch of renegade cowboys who are hired to protect a British guy's property as "regulators." Any gangsta rap fans out there will recognize the multiple lines of dialogue that were eventually sampled in Warren G.'s 1994 hit "Regulate." Yes, this movie has left behind quite a legacy, hasn't it?
Estevez plays the charasmatic leader of the group, Billy the Kid (ever heard of him?), who vows to wage war against Jack "Yummy" Palance's crime ring, who outnumber them by about a hundred. The movie works in several gunfights amid the laughable dramatic scenes, as Emilio the Kid faces dissent from Sheen the Preacher, Kiefer the Mature Lover and Lou the Mestizo Heathen. Eventually, they all become outlaws and are stalked by Palance's boys and American cavalry troops, leading to the final showdown, a gunfight that seems to last almost twenty minutes.
If you like movies that function merely as excuses for people to shoot off guns for long periods at a time, YOUNG GUNS is probably the movie for you. You'll also have to overlook some seriously boring dramatic scenes, the most inadvertently hilarious of which is a dramatic speech by Lou the Mestizo Heathen, who recounts the injustices of Americans to his "people," all of whom except for him are dead. "I had to watch them bash in the heads of my little sisters with their bootheels because they didn't want to waste bullets!" At least you didn't have to watch YOUNG GUNS and waste two hours of your life.
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