Matrixston Wow! Such a good movie.

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Megamind To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

julesfdelorme THE LEFT HANDED GUN Along with my new found fixation on Film Noir, I've also been rediscovering my great love for classic Westerns. I started out with The Left Handed Gun, Arthur Penn's 1958 treatment of the Billy the Kid legend. At the time of its release, The Left Handed Gun was hailed in Europe as a masterpiece, the first American Western of the anti-hero. Based on a Gore Vidal play the film bases its title on the only known image of Billy the Kid in which he seems to have his pistol holstered on the left side and holds a rifle in his right hand. As it turns out, that photograph has been shown to be improperly developed, leading to a mirror image which only made it seem like his holster was on the left side. Most of what we know about Billy the Kid today in fact suggests that he did most of his killing with a shotgun because he was such a terrible shot with a pistol. The film still has The Kid as a lightning draw and a basically good but wild and misunderstood young man. Historically that of course no longer stands up. It didn't quite stand up then. That one picture does not show the handsome and dashing Paul Newman type, but a scrawny bucktoothed figure who was probably called Kid because he resembled a young goat. The real Kid was probably a serial killer, who shot most of the men he killed in the back or in the dark and, unlike the other so called outlaws of the time, killed for no good reason other than to kill. The film itself feels dated and much more closely related to its B movie cousins than to the modern Western. It doesn't have the character of a Shane or Rio Bravo, or the darkness of a Oxbow Incident or the later Clint Eastwood movies. That's not to say that it's not a fun film to watch. It's just fun in that Audie Murphy B Movie way. The Left Handed Gun does not seem like a masterpiece today. Paul Newman's Billy the Kid does not seem at all like an anti-hero when compared to the anti-hero as we have come to know it. It's a fun watch. The Left Handed Gun is just not really a classic anymore. It's just another fun B movie Western. #movies #film #filmcritique #classicwesterns #thelefthandedgun

James Hitchcock The notorious outlaw William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid, has been the subject of a number of films. Sam Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" and Howard Hughes's "The Outlaw" are among the better-known ones. He also appears, although not as the main character, in Andrew V. McLaglen's "Chisum". Arthur Penn's "The Left Handed Gun" is a lesser- known treatment of the story; the title refers to the belief (probably incorrect) that Billy was left handed. The film starts with Billy's involvement in the Lincoln County War, a range war which took place in New Mexico in 1878. Billy is befriended and taken on as a ranch hand by a kindly cattle boss named Tunstall, who is later murdered by rival cattlemen in league with a corrupt local sheriff. Billy swears revenge and plans to hunt down and kill all the men responsible for his friend's death. His actions, however, jeopardise the territorial amnesty proclaimed by New Mexico governor Lew Wallace, and bring him into conflict with the local population and with his former friend Pat Garrett. A sub-plot involves a journalist named Moultrie who, much to Billy's disgust, sends romanticised and highly exaggerated material back East, leading to the creation of the "Billy the Kid legend". In the film Tunstall is referred to as 'The Englishman', even though he speaks with a Scottish accent and it is stated that he comes from Ayrshire. This is presumably a mistake on the part the characters rather than a goof by the film-makers and the scriptwriter Gore Vidal; like many foreigners, Billy and the other Americans make the common mistake of confusing "English" with "British". In reality John Henry Tunstall actually was an Englishman, from London, and far from being elderly was only 25 at the time of his death. The idea of portraying him as an older father-figure to Billy may have influenced a similar treatment of the character in "Chisum". Penn, who died two years ago, is perhaps best remembered today for his "Bonnie and Clyde", the story of two other notorious outlaws. That film, made in 1967, caught the Zeitgeist of the late sixties, portraying its protagonists as misunderstood young people, essentially as hippies born before their time. Likewise, "The Left Handed Gun" portrays Billy the Kid as a psychologically troubled teenager, a "rebel without a cause" transferred from the 1950s to the 1870s. Indeed, the role was originally intended for James Dean, the original "rebel without a cause", and only went to Paul Newman after Dean's death in a car crash. The film also looks forward to the sixties in another way. It is an early example of a revisionist Western which seeks to get away from the "heroic myth" of the Old West and to present a more morally nuanced view of the period, in the same way as the makers of films noirs were bringing a note of moral ambiguity to modern crime dramas. In many earlier Westerns Billy would have been presented as a heroic avenger, but not here. The men who murder Tunstall may be evil and corrupt, but that does not mean that Billy is justified in taking the law into his own hands to seek revenge. By doing so, he only brings about tragedy for himself and others. Penn may have chosen to make the film in black-and- white, at a time when colour was increasingly the norm in the Western genre, to suggest a link with film noir. (William Wyler's "The Big Country", another Western from 1958, also seeks to blur the once-sharp distinction between heroes and villains, but Wyler's film is in full colour). In one sense, Newman was miscast as Billy; he would have been 33 in 1958, whereas his character was only 18 during the Lincoln County War and died at the age of 21. This was not Newman's best performance of his career- indeed, it was not his best performance of 1958. He gave better ones in two better films made in the same year, "The Long Hot Summer" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". Nevertheless, he shows plenty of the charisma which made him such an exciting new star in the late fifties, despite his inauspicious start to his film career in "The Silver Chalice", and is convincing enough as the troubled young man to make us overlook the discrepancy in age between actor and character. The film was a box-office flop in the United States, which is perhaps not surprising. It is rather dull and downbeat compared to many Westerns of the period, the narrative can at times be difficult to follow and few, if any, of the supporting performances have anything like the intensity of Newman's. It has occasional points of interest, but is not a film in the sane class as "Bonnie and Clyde", and certainly not in the same class as "The Big Country". 5/10

MartinHafer When the film began, I suddenly had very low hopes for it. That's because the opening tune was simply horrible--with bad lyrics and a cheesy quality that made me cringe. However, I assumed it would get a lot better. After all, almost anything Paul Newman did is well worth seeing (other than his first film, "The Silver Chalice"--which Newman himself often mocked when asked about it). Well, while this isn't as bad as "The Silver Chalice", it is pretty bad.The biggest problem with the film is the direction. It seems that instead of making a simple western, the actors had been told to act as if they were at a workshop given by The Actor's Studio--and each of them was trying to out-emote each other. Imagine a film where EVERYONE is method acting and all trying to do it more broadly and noticeably than the last guy! Subtle, it was not--in fact, it was seriously funny at times. There were just so many scenes that were overacted horribly. I especially loved the death scenes and when folks got mad because they REALLY died spectacularly or got insanely angry! I especially loved Pat Garrett's (John Dehner) reactions in the film--they were downright funny.The other big problem is that as a historical piece, the film bore no resemblance to reality! Like a lot of bad westerns, this one purports to be about an infamous western bandit (in this case, Billy the Kid) but isn't his life in the least. And, combined with the crap acting and direction, the film is just a complete mess. So, unless you like bad films or have no taste at all, steer clear of this one. Even with Newman, it's a dog.

alexandre michel liberman (tmwest) I had a problem seeing this film because I could not accept Paul Newman's performance as Billy the Kid. He was such a great actor, but in this film he overacts. I decided to see it again and was glad that I did it because you have to place a film in the time it was made. This is what I read in a print of a poster for the film published in the book "The Western" by Phil Hardy :"This is William Bonney, a juvenile "tough" from the back-alleys of New York...a teenager wanted dead or alive throughout the West. This is the screen's first real story of the strange teen-age desperado known to legend as "Billy the Kid..." By seeing this ad it becomes obvious that there was an idea at least in the publicity of the film to move "The Wild One" and "Rebel Without a Cause" to the West. Probably this kind of performance was demanded of Newman. The film is far from perfect, but has many qualities, the main one that it makes us understand very well Billy's internal conflicts. Billy here is an open book, compared specially to Kris Kristofferson' s unpredictable Billy. Same goes for Pat Garret. Considering what was made before, including the awful "Freudian" version "The Outlaw" and what came after,Peckinpah's excellent film and both "Young Guns" "The Left Handed Gun" stands up quite well.